Languages borrow words from each other. Turkish has taken many words from Arabic, Persian, and in recent times from Western languages. But this relationship is not one-sided: Turkish has also given thousands of words to neighboring languages. Particularly in the Balkans and the Caucasus, Turkish-origin words continue to live in many languages spoken today.
A table about this topic circulates on the internet: showing how many Turkish words exist in each language. 9,000 in Serbian, over 4,000 in Armenian, thousands in Bulgarian and Greek... These numbers are impressive, but there are several important notes about how they should be understood.
Why Did So Many Words Spread?
The answer lies in history. The Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans for nearly five centuries. During this period, administration, military affairs, commerce, crafts, cuisine, and daily life were largely structured by Turkish words (and by Arabic-Persian words that came through Turkish).
Word borrowing was especially concentrated in everyday life. Names of food, household items, professions, craft terms, units of measurement — these are the groups of words most easily transferred. Because when a society encounters a new object or concept, it often adopts the name given to it by the language of those who introduced it.
Linguists note that the transfer of Turkish words to Balkan languages began in the 15th century and reached its peak in the 19th century.
Why Should We Be Cautious About Numbers?
The circulating tables attribute 9,000 to Serbian, 4,260 to Armenian, and several thousand to Bulgarian and Greek. These figures are generally attributed to the Turkish Language Association. However, the question "How many Turkish words are in a language?" does not have a single correct answer. Here's why:
Standard language or spoken language? A word may not appear in a formal dictionary but may still be used among the people. If you count spoken language and dialects, the number rises; if you count only standard written language, it falls.
How many are still in use? A significant portion of the borrowed words are no longer used or are considered archaic. Hundreds of words that were common in the 19th century have survived only in dictionaries or in the speech of the older generation. "Total historical words" and "words in current use" are two very different numbers.
Turkish or through Turkish? Some of these words are actually of Arabic or Persian origin; they entered Turkish from there and then passed into Balkan languages through Turkish. Whether to count these as "Turkish words" or "words transmitted through Turkish" depends on the method used.
For this reason, it is correct to read a number like 9,000 not as an "absolute fact" but as "an estimate reached according to a specific counting method."
What Do These Words Look Like?
Concrete examples tell more than abstract numbers. Most of the Turkish-origin words that live in Balkan languages are at the center of daily life.
Cuisine leads the way: words like soup, kebab, grape leaves, stuffed vegetables, yogurt, raki, coffee, baklava live in various Balkan languages with slight phonetic variations. A Serb, a Greek, and a Bulgarian all recognize these words.
The same applies to home and everyday life: words like window, drawer, fountain, neighbor, shop, money, paint have Turkish-origin equivalents in many neighboring languages. Professions and crafts (tailor, butcher, grocer) were similarly transmitted.
What is interesting is that most of these words are not perceived as "foreign" by speakers. The word has become a natural part of the language; often only linguists know its Turkish origin. Beyond the words themselves, idioms and expressions known worldwide about Turks are also part of this cultural exchange.
Not One-Sided, But Mutual Exchange
To be honest, this exchange was not one-sided. Turkish also took many words from neighboring languages during the same centuries — particularly from Greek, Slavic languages, and Italian. Some maritime terms, certain food names, and a portion of everyday words entered Turkish this way.
So the issue is not "which language is superior to which." Peoples who lived side by side for centuries inevitably nourish each other's languages. The Balkans are, for this reason, an example of a "language union" for linguists: languages of different origins gain similar features as a result of long shared life.
Not Just the Balkans
Turkish-origin words live not only in Balkan languages, but in a much wider geography. Armenian and Georgian in the Caucasus, various Arabic dialects in the Middle East, and even Russian carry a significant number of Turkish-origin words.
Some words in Russian bear the trace of centuries-long contact with Turkic languages; this influence is especially visible in terms related to trade, horse-breeding, and nomadic life. Hungarian also has an old layer of Turkish words due to early contact with Turkic peoples — this extends far earlier than the Ottoman period in the Balkans.
The relationship with Persian and Arabic is more complex: there was a two-way flow between these languages and Turkish for centuries. Turkish took many words from these languages, but it also gave words to them in the fields of state and military affairs.
How Did Words Change?
A word that passes from one language to another often does not remain the same; it adapts to the sound structure of the receiving language. When a Turkish word passes into Serbian or Greek, it changes its form according to that language's pronunciation, affixation rules, and stress patterns.
For this reason, the same Turkish root appears slightly different in different languages. For a linguist, these changes provide clues about when and how the word was transmitted. The form the word takes is, in a sense, the diary of its journey.
Why Is It Such a Compelling "Trace"?
The words in a language are among the most silent witnesses of that people's history. When a Serb says "soup," when a Greek drinks "coffee," or when a Bulgarian greets his "neighbor," they are unconsciously speaking the shared life of centuries past.
This is one of the most enduring traces of Turkish presence in the world. A mosque can be torn down, a grave can be lost, a border can change. But a word that has taken root in a language continues to live in the mouths of those who speak it — often without anyone even asking where it came from.
The certainty of numbers may be debatable; but the trace itself is concrete, every day in the speech of millions of people around the world.
