This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
Words from Turkish: where they came from and where they fit
In Serbian you cannot make breakfast or fix a shelf without certain words: kafa “coffee”, šećer “sugar”, sat “clock, hour”, jastuk “pillow”, čekić “hammer”. Every one of them came through Turkish. The lesson “Layers of loanwords” showed this layer beside the others; here we step inside it. It is the largest layer, and in it a choice of word is heard at once: the same thing can be named with a word for an official form, a word from the kitchen and a word from an old song.
Turkish as the go-between, not always the source
A word that came into Serbian through Turkish is called a Turkism (Serbian turcizam). The name tells you the route, not the origin: the Turkish word itself was often Arabic or Persian. Ottoman Turkish carried a huge Eastern vocabulary, and it handed that vocabulary on to Serbian together with the objects, customs and crafts. English knows the pattern: coffee also came from Arabic by way of Turkish, and sugar goes back to the same Persian word as šećer.
The practical upshot: hunting for a “more Slavic” synonym is usually pointless. For šećer, čarapa, jastuk there is none; these are the neutral Serbian words. A choice appears only where a native double stands beside the Turkism, and there register begins.
Marks of form: how a Turkish word became Serbian
Turkish sounds settled into Serbian by a few steady correspondences. Knowing them, you can often spot the layer at a glance, and you stop wondering why ćevap begins with ć and đubre “rubbish” with đ. One thing to know about Turkish spelling first: Turkish ç is the ch of church, Turkish c is the j of judge, ş is sh, and ü, ö are the rounded vowels of German über, schön. Serbian lacks these vowels.
Next the word was given a Serbian gender. Words ending in a consonant became masculine (džep, sat, inat, sanduk, čekić), words in -a feminine (kafa, boja, torba, čarapa, sarma). And Turkish words ending in the vowels -ı/-i/-u were most often built out by Serbian into its familiar -ija:
Suffixes Serbian took for itself
A sure sign that a layer has stopped being foreign: its suffixes start working on Serbian roots. Four such suffixes are alive in the language to this day.
The suffix -džija is still alive, and not only for trades: inadžija “someone who does everything out of spite” and šaljivdžija “joker” name a person by temperament. How these suffixes fit into the wider system is the subject of the lesson “Noun-forming suffixes”.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Words from Turkish
A Turkism came through Turkish; the source is often Arabic or Persian. Most have no alternative; register starts where a neutral double exists.