Turkisms in the Balkan Languages

This study was conducted to make an analysis of the introduction of Turkisms in the Balkan languages. Turkish words have entered these languages at different periods of time and they have had their impact on different areas as institutions, trade and social life among others. A great number of words are borrowed by languages as Albanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Greek, and Romanian. Turkish borrowings have served as a means for enriching the languages. The authors have studied the historic, cultural, ethnographic, literary and linguistic issues. To this end, a number of documents were researched by the authors in order to get to know the situation of Turkisms in Balkan languages at different periods of time. Numerous examples are provided so as to give evidence to the conclusion that Turkisms have become an organic part of the Balkan languages. They belong not only to the past but also the present reality.Keywords: Turkisms, borrowings, Balkan languages, Turkish roots, semantic differences, suffixes