Turkish words you already know if you speak Bosnian

Bosnian took hundreds of everyday words from Turkish. Nearly forty of them, four false friends, and what it means when a Bosnian speaker starts Turkish.

If you speak Bosnian, you already know some Turkish. More than four centuries of Ottoman rule, from 1463 to 1878, left Bosnian with a large number of Turkish loanwords, called turcizmi, and hundreds of them are still everyday words. A Bosnian speaker starting Turkish recognises far more vocabulary on the first day than an English speaker does. Here are some of the most common, with the Turkish word next to the Bosnian one.

At the table

kahva and kahve: coffee
džezva and cezve: the small coffee pot
findžan and fincan: a small cup
šećer and şeker: sugar
jogurt and yoğurt: yoghurt
ćevapi and kebap: grilled meat (in Türkiye, kebap covers many dishes)
burek and börek: filled pastry (in Türkiye, börek is any filled pastry, not only with meat)
baklava, sarma, dolma and pekmez: the same words in both languages
kašika and kaşık: spoon
tepsija and tepsi: tray
tava and tava: frying pan

Around the house and the street

pendžer and pencere: window
jastuk and yastık: pillow
avlija and avlu: courtyard
čaršija and çarşı: the market quarter
sokak and sokak: street
dućan and dükkân: shop
komšija and komşu: neighbour
ćuprija and köprü: bridge
ćošak and köşe: corner

Clothes, tools and everyday things

čarapa and çorap: sock
džep and cep: pocket
dugme and düğme: button
papuče and papuç: slippers
čizme and çizme: boots
torba and torba: bag
čekić and çekiç: hammer
alat and alet: tool
sat and saat: hour, clock
pare and para: money
mušterija and müşteri: customer
zanat and zanaat: craft, trade

Four false friends

Some words travelled but changed their meaning on the way. These four catch out Bosnian speakers in Turkish, and Turkish speakers in Bosnian:

merak: in Bosnian, pleasure or delight; in Turkish, curiosity or a keen interest.
boja: in Bosnian, both colour and paint; in Turkish, boya is only paint or dye, and colour is renk.
tavan: in Bosnian, the attic; in Turkish, the ceiling.
kapija: in Bosnian, a gate; in Turkish, kapı is any door.

Is Turkish easy for Bosnian speakers, then?

The words are a real head start for reading and listening. The grammar is a different story. Turkish builds words by adding endings, one after another: ev is a house, evler houses, evlerimiz our houses, and evlerimizde in our houses. The verb comes at the end of the sentence, and the vowels in an ending change to match the word they join, which is called vowel harmony. None of it is hard once it is explained in order, and it is easier explained in your own language.

And for Turkish speakers learning Bosnian

The same list works in reverse. A Turkish speaker in Sarajevo hears familiar words in every café and market, which makes the first weeks of Bosnian far less strange. The grammar, with its cases and verb pairs, is where the work is.

Learning Turkish at Triglot

Turkish lessons at Triglot Languages run from A1 to C1 and are explained in Bosnian or English. A fifty-minute one-to-one lesson costs £18, and every learner starts with the free level test and a twenty-minute consultation.