Special Plural Nouns

Irregular Plural Nouns

Some nouns just have completely irregular plural forms.

Collective Plurals

Some nouns are just always considered plural, often because they are made up of a bunch of individual pieces.

Arabic Plurals

Pashto has many Arabic loan words, and people often use the Arabic plural forms of these loan words. We won't get into how plurals work in Arabic here, but you will learn to recognize and use these plural through lots of exposure.

For now, see if you can notice some of the basic patterns.

Some of the words change drastically:

Some add an ات - áat on the end:

And some add an ین - éen on the end:

Arabic Plurals are Often Masculine

Once a word is put into it's special Arabic plural form, it often becomes a masculine plural (based on the consonant ending) even if the singular version of the word was feminine. If the Arabic plural form ends in a feminine sounding ending, though, it still remains feminine.

Arabic Plurals are Not Always Used

For many words, people may either use the regular Pashto plural endings or the special Arabic form. Here are a couple examples of words that are often said either way.

Masculine nouns with feminine plurals

Above we learned that masculine nouns that fit into the #1 basic pattern, we add the ونه - óona ending to make it plural. But there is also another interesting thing that happens in Pashto:

Masculine nouns ending in a consonant can become feminine for the plural form. Often you will hear both forms of the plural, the regular masculine form with ونه - óona and the feminine form as well.