In a market café in Sarajevo, I was eavesdropping on a Bosnian family at the next table: words like "čarape", "čizma", "jorgan" were flying through the air, and I couldn't help smiling — they were all Turkish, just dressed up in Slavic grammar. When I ordered "чорба" (chorba) in a restaurant in Sofia, and saw "ciorbă" on a sign in Bucharest, the same amazement repeated. After visiting more than 45 countries, I've noticed something: the Ottoman Empire's political borders have long since retreated, but its words still live in everyday life across a vast geography from the Balkans to the Middle East, from Hungary to the Caucasus. But is this legacy really "countable"? In this article, I'll look at concrete examples and also take a critical distance from exaggerated claims on this subject.
Is There a Definitive Number? What Do Linguists Say
First, let's be honest: there's no single list that linguists unanimously agree has "Turkish contributed exactly X thousand words." There are several reasons for this. First, a significant portion of words that came through Ottoman Turkish originally have Arabic or Persian roots, but were transported to local languages with Turkish pronunciation and morphology (for example, with suffixes like -lık, -cı, -hane); how to classify them — as "pure Turkish" or "Turkish-mediated" — varies from researcher to researcher. Second, the number of words used in standard language versus historical words that are no longer in use produces very different results.
A concrete example: Bosnian linguist Abdulah Škaljić's dictionary, published in 1965 and still considered authoritative today, catalogued Turkish-origin words in Serbo-Croatian with over 8,700 entries. In contrast, in modern standard Serbian, the number of Turkish-origin words that remain in daily use is said to be much lower, dropping to just a few thousand. So anyone looking for a "complete list" arrives at very different numbers depending on which period and usage frequency they base their calculations on. My goal in this article is not to claim a definitive number, but to convey concrete and verifiable examples that linguists emphasize, along with their categories.
The Balkans' Shared Heritage: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian
In the Balkan geography where the Ottoman Empire directly ruled for centuries, linguistic contact has left the deepest and most lasting marks. In the Serbo-Croatian language family (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin), many everyday words still come directly from Turkish: "čarape" (sock), "čizma" (boot), "dugme" (button), "top" (ball), "boja" (paint), "alat" (tool), "budala" (fool), "inat" (spite), "dušman" (enemy). In family greetings too, "amidža" (uncle) and "babo" (grandfather/father) are familiar terms. Cuisine is one of the richest layers of this transition: "burek" (pastry), "ćevapi" (kebab), "pilav" (pilaf), "jogurt" (yogurt), "baklava" and "sarma" (from the verb "to wrap") are recognizable names throughout the region. Bosnia-Herzegovina stands out as the region that most densely preserves this vocabulary because of Islamic-cultural ties to the Ottoman period; suffixes like "-luk", "-ci", "-hane" can still be used today to create new words.
Traces of Daily Life in Bulgarian and Greek
Bulgaria, during approximately five centuries of Ottoman rule, was influenced at the vocabulary level; the grammatical structure remained largely Slavic, but Turkish contributed significantly to everyday vocabulary. During the 19th-century Bulgarian National Revival, literary language was deliberately simplified and some Turkish-origin words were eliminated; still, words like "чорба" (chorba), "тава" (tava), "джоб" (pocket) and "сарма" (sarma) continue to live in everyday speech. Greek presents a similar picture: "μπακλαβάς" (baklava), "καφές" (kafes/coffee) and "γιαούρτι" (yiaourti/yogurt) are culinary words that are the most concrete evidence of two peoples living together for centuries. An interesting detail: the word "yogurt" comes from the verb "to mix and thicken" in Old Turkish, spread through Ottoman Turkish to surrounding languages, and from there via French into English ("yogurt").
Romanian's Surprising Examples
In the territories of Wallachia and Moldavia, which remained vassal principalities of the Ottoman Empire for long periods, Turkish also left a permanent mark, but there's an interesting point that Romanian researchers emphasize: some of these words have undergone semantic shift. Words like "Aga" (agha, military/administrative official), "bacșiș" (bakshish), "beci" (cellar), "hamam", "vizir" and from the kitchen "cafea" (coffee), "iaurt" (yogurt), "pilaf" and "ciorbă" (chorba) are still used in standard Romanian today. But what's truly striking is this: the word "ciubuc" has shifted from its Ottoman Turkish meaning of "tobacco pipe" to mean "bribe" over time; "hazna" evolved from "treasury room" to mean "toilet, sewer." Such semantic shifts are good evidence that when a word passes from one language to another, it doesn't remain frozen in its original meaning — local usage can completely reshape it.
Arabic and Persian: The Administrative and Military Layer
Here the direction interestingly reverses, because Ottoman Turkish itself had already absorbed intense vocabulary from Arabic and Persian. Yet four centuries of direct rule, particularly with Levantine Arabic (Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian dialects), Iraq and North Africa dialects, allowed some Turkish administrative and military terms to settle — titles like "paşa", "bey" and "efendi" are among the most familiar. However, following the Ottoman collapse in the early 20th century, Arab nationalism and negative period perception caused a significant portion of these words to be abandoned over time; in daily Arabic today, those that persist are far fewer than in Balkan languages. On the Persian side, the picture is even more modest: the centuries-long rule of Turkish-origin dynasties (Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Safavids, Qajars) in Iranian territory allowed some words like "han", "aga", "bey" to enter Persian, but this interaction remained limited to political-military terminology. It should be noted that this aspect is also far less catalogued in linguistics literature than the Balkan examples.
Hungarian's Two Different Layers: Old Turkish or Ottoman
The Hungarian example points to one of the most common mistakes on this subject: attributing every Turkish-origin word in Hungarian to the Ottoman occupation period (1541-1699). In fact, the ancestors of Hungarians made contact with Turkish-origin steppe peoples (Ogur Turks) long before the Ottoman conquest, centuries before settling in Europe. Words like "Szó" (word), "daru" (crane), "borjú" (calf, related to Chuvash "păru") and "dél" (noon/south) belong to this much earlier layer and have nothing to do with the Ottoman. During Hungary's direct Ottoman rule from 1541 to 1699, a new layer of Turkish vocabulary did enter, but most of these were viewed as "the occupier's language" and gradually abandoned with the return of Habsburg rule at the end of the 17th century. So next time someone tells you a Hungarian word "came from the Ottomans," it's helpful to ask which century they're talking about.
Words Know No Borders
In the dozens of countries I've visited, I love this most: a word has no passport. "Yogurt" passed from Turkish to French, then to English, and settled into the world culinary language. The word "kiosk" entered English as "kiosk" through French from "köşk" and now appears everywhere from a newspaper stand to an app interface. Even the Turkish word "ordu" (army) became "horde" in English through Polish and French. We started this article with a "complete list" title, but what we really learned is this: linguists may not agree on a final total, but every time I encountered this shared vocabulary on plates, streets, even in titles across my travels, it showed that we've formed a bond far more permanent than the borders drawn on paper. Next time you buy "čizma" in Belgrade or sip a "καφές" (coffee) in Athens, you're actually joining a conversation that's come down from centuries before.
