—  283  —
Ocene, zapiski, poročila – Reviews, Notes, Reports
Florence Lydia GRAHAM, 2020:  
Turkisms in South Slavonic 
Literature: Turkish Loanwords 
in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-
Century Bosnian and Bulgarian 
Franciscan Sources. Ox ford: OUP. 
409 pp.
Florence Lydia Graham tackles the 
complex topic of Ottoman Turkish 
borrowings in Bosnian and Bulgarian 
writing traditions in her work Turkisms 
in South Slavonic Literature: Turkish 
Loanwords in 17th and 18th century 
Bosnian and Bulgarian Franciscan 
Sources (h ereafter TS S L ) . Al on g wi th 
analyzing Turkisms, she discusses the 
earliest written attestations of Turkisms 
in these traditions, adding many earlier 
dates to those noted in previous studies.. 
Graham’s analysis shows the increase 
in Turkisms used in Franciscan writ-
ing from the 17th to the 18th century. 
Because the analysis deals with pre-
standardized texts, there is a section on 
orthography to aid the interpretation of 
the examples in TSSL.
All but three writers whose texts 
are analyzed wrote in Latin script (27). 
The Latinica used by the Franciscans 
had influences from either Italian or 
Hungarian, and Graham describes the 
differences between the two and pro-
vides comparisons with modern stand-
ards, noting that primary sources in 
Bosančica are transcribed into “modern 
BCS spelling,” while works written in 
Latinica are kept in their original spell-
ing (9). Bulgarian Cyrillic appears to 
have been transcribed like Bosančica, 
judging by her example on page 18 and 
how the Bulgarian glossary entries in-
clude graphemes such as č and š for 
Cyrillic ч and ш.
Graham limits her study to the Bos-
nian Franciscans of the 17th and 18th 
century noting that “until the 19th 
century, the majority of the books pub -
lished in Bosnian were written by the 
Bosnian Franciscans”, and “Bosnian 
Muslims tended to write in Arabic” and 
“Serbs had Church Slavonic influence” 
(2). The primary Bulgarian texts used 
in this study were also written by Fran-
ciscans, though some non-Franciscan 
writing is used for comparison of earli-
est attestation dates. Graham states that 
originally, Bulgarian was “included as 
a point of comparison,” but the “sig-
nificance of Turkish in the Bulgarian 
texts” causes the Bulgarian texts to have 
“equal weight to the Bosnian texts” (3). 
However, Bosnian receives more focus 
throughout TSSL.
The Bosnian texts are the works of 
seven 18th century and five 17th century 
Bosnian Franciscans. Graham describes 
how the Franciscans from Italy first 
founded Bosna Srebrena, the Francis-
can order of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 
1291. In 1463, Sultan Mehmed II issued 
a capitulation, or contract, allowing the 
Franciscans to remain, although many 
Catholics left Bosnia or converted to 
Islam during Ottoman rule (4). Graham 
describes the circumstances of the Fran -
ciscans in the Ottoman Empire, noting 
that “despite the harsh treatment /…/ 
experienced at the hands of the Turks, 
they still incorporated Turkish words 
into their writing” (6). Graham also 
provides detailed descriptions of each 
of the 11 writers analysed, all monastic 
brothers, and the texts analyzed, which 
include eleven religious works “written 
for the use of clergymen in Bosnia and 
the greater South Slav area” as well as 
two chronicles describing events that 
affected the friars lives, such as power 
vicissitudes of the Ottoman Empire and 
the Kingdom of Hungary, as well as 
biblical events (9–13).

—  284  — Slavia Centralis 1/2021
Ocene, zapiski, poročila – Reviews, Notes, Reports
The Bulgarian Catholics were main-
ly Saxon miners and tradesmen from 
Western Europe, until the Council of 
Trent (1545–1563), after which Bosnian 
Franciscans were given responsibil-
ity for the welfare of the Catholics in 
Bulgaria and also converted Bulgarian 
non-Catholics, “especially the Pauli-
cians around Plovdiv and the Danube.” 
Graham explains that the Bulgarian 
Catholics were more rebellious than 
the Bosnian Catholics, though she 
does mention that reports on Bulgarian 
Catholic-Ottoman Turkish relations are 
largely limited to the Čiprovci uprising 
of 1688. This informational gap is a 
point of possible future study, as Gra-
ham mentions that the “amount of Turk-
ish influence on the language and the 
continuous existence of the Paulician 
Catholic communities” illustrates the 
complex relationship between Bulgar-
ian Catholics and the Ottomans (13–15).
Graham analyzes two Bulgarian pub -
lished works. The first is Petar Bogdan 
Bakšič’s mediationes S. Vonauenturæ, 
To yeʃn Bogoglivbna razmiscglianya od 
Otayʃtva Odkuplienya Coviçanskoga 
‘Saint Bonaventura’s Mediations, That is 
God-loving Reflections on the Mystery 
of the Redemption of Mankind’ (1638) 
which, as Graham states, is a translation 
into Croatian with little Bulgarian influ-
ence since Croatian was the language 
of the seminary in Bulgaria at the time 
(16). The other published work is Filip 
Stanislavov’s Abagar ‘Abgar’ (1651), 
“regarded as the first printed book in 
Early Modern Bulgarian” (16). Graham 
also analyzes three unpublished Bul-
garian Catholic manuscripts, the site of 
the majority of Turkisms. Notably, the 
two published works were written for 
a learned audience and only have one 
Turkism, “harami ‘bandits’” between 
them. The three manuscripts, all in 
Latinica, contain 658 Turkism lemmas 
altogether. There are also five supple-
mentary Bulgarian texts of non-Catholic 
origin, three damaskini, a žitie, and a 
collection of scribal notes (Xristova et 
al. 2004), analyzed to provide chrono-
logical comparison in the absence of a 
source listing the earliest attestations 
of Turkisms in Bulgarian (13–17). The 
total number of Bulgarian Turkisms in 
this study is 852 (189); however, Gra-
ham’s appendices include Turkisms that 
were only encountered in the supple-
mentary materials; for example, hiletčija 
‘cheater, imposter’ from Tr. hiletçi was 
found only in the Trojanski damaskin 
(225). Presumably therefore, 659 is the 
number of Turkisms used by the Bulgar -
ian Franciscans, one more than the total 
of the three manuscripts since harami 
‘bandits’ is only encountered in Abagar 
(225), while the remaining 193 Turkisms 
reported come solely from the supple-
mentary materials. While the source of 
each Turkism is shown in the glossary 
(215–240), Graham does not discuss this 
discrepancy in detail. All told, the page 
count of primary sources is staggering, 
with many sources being hundreds of 
pages each, showing the amount of work 
that went into this study.
The book includes eight chapters, 
which equal about half of the book’s 
page count, followed by eight appen-
dices making up the remaining half. 
The organization of TSSL and the ap-
pendices allow this book to be used as a 
reference for future studies dealing with 
the chronology of Turkisms in Bosnian 
and Bulgarian, as well as studies about 
Turkisms in general.
The first chapter is the introduction 
of the book and discusses terminology, 
the translations/glosses used, the ra-
tionale for material selection, overview 
of the book, historical background and 

—  285  —
Ocene, zapiski, poročila – Reviews, Notes, Reports
description of the sources, as well as 
discussions relating to language, phonol-
ogy, and orthography used in the work.
The second chapter discusses the 
problems of earliest attestations and 
dating of Turkisms from the findings 
from this study as well as previous 
studies and existing referencial sources. 
This chapter, with the related appen-
dices, could be used as reference for 
any future study relating to the pre-19th 
century chronology of Turkisms in Bos -
nian and Bulgarian.
Chapters three through six describe 
in detail how the Turkisms are represent -
ed and fit into the grammatical system 
of Bosnian and Bulgarian, primarily in 
regard to part-of-speech and morphol-
ogy. Namely, chapter three discusses 
nouns, chapter four verbs, chapter five 
adjectives and adverbs, and chapter six 
conjunctions.
The analysis in chapter three de -
scribes how Bosnian and Bulgarian as-
signed gender and declension type to 
the Turkisms, as well as how nominal 
suffixes both Slavic and those borrowed 
from Turkish were added to borrowed 
stems. For example, Graham finds that 
the suffix -luk < -lİk was productive 
in Bosnian occurring with non-Turkish 
roots such as “gospodarluk ‘kingdom’ 
and Latinluk ‘area populated by Chris-
tians’” (85). A similar description of 
nominal suffix Turkisms is given for 
Bulgarian as well.
Chapter four focuses on borrowed 
verbs. Graham discusses wholesale bor-
rowing of Turkish verbs versus adding 
Slavic verbal suffixes to nominal Turk-
isms, how such verbal suffixes were 
added, the aspect of borrowed verbs, 
as well as how prefixes were added to 
verbal Turkisms.
In chapter five, Graham describes the 
various ways that borrowed adjectives 
are formed. She divides the adjectives 
borrowed into Bosnian by types — 
“those that adopted Slavonic adjectival 
suffixes /…/, those often derived from 
verbs as they have the past participial 
suffix -an/en, and those that remain in 
their original Turkish forms and do not 
decline” (134). Bulgarian adjectives are 
found to have three types as well, though 
slightly different; “adjectives with Turk -
ish roots that take Slavonic adjectival 
suffixes…, those that are Turkish de-
rived adjectives; and those that are Turk-
ish root adjectives” (143). This chapter 
also describes borrowed adverbs.
Chapter six describes borrowed con-
junctions. It is the shortest chapter and 
each conjunction borrowed is briefly 
discussed since there are so few.
Chapter seven is devoted to “Mo -
tivation, Semantics and Integration of 
Turkisms.” This chapter provides in-
sight into the choice and use of the Turk-
isms described throughout the work. 
Here Graham divides the Turkisms into 
categories based on similar semantic 
meanings such as, “weaponry and vio-
lent conflict, religious terminology, or 
trade and monetary terms” (163). She 
also discusses the “role of writers’ back -
ground and views” (164).
The conclusion, chapter eight, in-
cludes a summary of findings as well 
as a holistic comparison of Turkisms 
in Bosnian and Bulgarian. The last 
paragraph of the body text presents 
questions for future research, such as 
differences in Turkisms from other 
languages and what that reveals about 
sociolinguistic contact, “how do these 
developments differ due to Slavonic 
and Turkish dialects”, and how has the 
status of Turkisms changed in Bosnian 
and Bulgarian since the 18th century.
As noted earlier, around half of 
TSSL is appendices, 201 pages out 

—  286  — Slavia Centralis 1/2021
Ocene, zapiski, poročila – Reviews, Notes, Reports
of 409, and so they are crucial to the 
work as a whole. Throughout the first 
half of TSSL around 125 Turkisms are 
described in detail and it is in these 
appendices that we see the remaining 
Turkisms. The appendices give the true 
scope of the study as they include all 
the individual Turkisms found in the 
source material. Each appendix conveys 
information that could be used as refer-
ence material for future studies and so 
are briefly described below.
Appendix I: Glossary of Turkisms 
in Bosnian – a Bosnian glossary of the 
Turkisms found in the study listed in 
alphabetical order with spelling vari-
ations, part of speech, English trans-
lation, the source in which they were 
found, and the Turkish word from which 
they were borrowed in the modern 
Turkish spelling.
Appendix II: Glossary of Turkisms 
in Bulgarian – is a Bulgarian glossary 
with the same characteristics.
Appendix III: Earliest Attestations 
of Turkisms and their Derivatives in 
Bosnian: RHSJ: Stachowski: Study’s 
Sources – a table of the earliest attesta-
tions of Turkisms in Bosnian, including 
information about each source the Turk-
isms occur in.
Appendix IV: Earliest Attestations 
of Turkisms in Bulgarian – a table of 
the earliest attestations of Turkisms in 
Bulgarian. I do want to note that these 
graphs of earliest attestations do not 
have page numbers in the print book, 
however the entries are alphabetically 
listed so it is still possible to use as a 
reference.
Appendix V: Comparative Table of 
Bosnian and Bulgarian Turkisms with 
their Respective Earliest Attestations – 
this appendix compares the date of each 
Turkism’s earliest written attestation 
between Bosnian and Bulgarian.
Appendix VI-VIII: The final three 
appendices are ten facsimiles and tran-
scriptions taken from each of the Bul-
garian manuscript sources. Following 
the appendices is an extensive bibliog-
raphy and indexes referencing gram-
matical terms, people, places, texts, and 
the around 125 Turkisms which are dis-
cussed in detail.
The material in TSSL is presented in 
an organized manner which allows for 
quick understanding and retrieval of the 
many findings. The organization and 
writing makes it so the reader is not re-
quired to be a Slavic specialist to follow 
the description; for example, on page 
119 there is a brief explanation of Bos-
nian verbal prefixation. It is also notable 
that throughout TSSL, the Bosnian and 
Bulgarian discussions are kept separat-
ed so that a reader focused on only one 
language would be able to locate rel-
evant data quickly. The structure is well 
organized and easy to navigate. The 
presentation of material into sections 
and subsections allows for the work to 
also be viewed as a reference, while still 
being readable as narrative. Besides the 
comparison of the total number of Turk -
isms in Bosnian and Bulgarian, there 
is also commentary and comparison 
of the differences between the specific 
Turkisms found in each language. This 
shows how the similar situation and 
the same source language can lead to 
differences in borrowing; however, as 
Graham notes, the genres of the writ-
ings differ as the Bosnian texts were 
published and the Bulgarian texts were 
mostly unpublished manuscripts meant 
to be read aloud to the common people. 
This means that a few of the differences 
in attestation dates and Turkisms found 
in this study could have different results 
if the texts were more similar. Lastly, 
Graham provides detailed analysis and 

—  287  —
Ocene, zapiski, poročila – Reviews, Notes, Reports
descriptions, presenting on a finding 
even if there was only one instance of 
it occurring.
A minor shortcoming is the location 
of the discussion of the alphabets used. 
A mapping of pre-modern Bosnian and 
Bulgarian Latinica to modern ortho-
graphic conventions is provided in ta-
bles 1.4, (31) and 1.5 (34). Because of 
the idiosyncratic layout, the reader must 
refer to pages 31 and 34 or memorize the 
pre-modern orthographic conventions 
used in the original texts. The inclu-
sion of these tables at the beginning of 
the introduction, and the beginning of 
the glossary, would have been benefi-
cial for comparing the 17–18th century 
Turkisms to other sources or modern 
orthography, especially as the Bulgar-
ian texts were written in Latinica rather 
than Cyrillic. Nevertheless, readability 
and the main discussions are not af-
fected due to the existence of English 
translations.
Another issue is that while the total 
number of unique Turkisms, or types, 
is included for both languages, namely 
693 for Bosnian and 852 for Bulgarian 
(189), a total count of tokens is not in-
cluded, though the data was referred to 
by Graham, showing that she had some 
of the frequency numbers. I believe this 
distinction between types and tokens 
would be very interesting and beneficial 
to see how much of the text is Turkisms, 
thereby showing if the Turkisms were 
repeatedly used or just a few times per 
type. It would also highlight the fre-
quency of each Turkism, which could 
show how integrated it had become. 
However in appendices III and IV there 
is a table showing each Turkism and the 
texts that they occurred in. This gives 
an overview of the spread of Turkisms 
among the writers and texts.
In sum, TSSL examines how bor-
rowed Turkisms were used by Bosnian 
and Bulgarian Franciscans, the writ-
ings by whom, according to Graham, 
while not direct transcriptions of spo-
ken language, “are some of the closest 
documentations of the vernacular of 
the time.” This work is impressive in 
scale and scope and will help scholars 
both new and experienced, especially 
th o s e f oc us ed o n l an gua g e c o n tac ts , 
the specific circumstances of the Otto-
man Empire on the writing cultures of 
the Balkans, the language of Catholic 
religious communities in the Balkans, 
Balkan historiography, Bosnian or Bul-
garian morphology and lexicography, 
among others. This work also benefits 
our understanding of early Turkisms 
in Bosnian and Bulgarian and shows 
the need for future studies on the topic 
since it was primarily focused on one 
religious group and literary tradition. 
By using Franciscan writings, Graham 
shows the usage of Turkish in a religious 
community outside of the Islamic and 
Orthodox traditions and therefore out-
side of the two majority religious com-
munities. Future studies might compare 
Graham’s findings with contempora-
neous writings in the other religious 
traditions.
REFERENCES
Boriana XRISTOV A, Darinka KARADŽO -
VA, and Elna UZUNOVA, 2004: Beležki na 
bălgarskite knižovnici X-XVIII vek. Sofia: 
Narodna biblioteka ‘Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodij’.
A. Jakob Johnson
Department of Slavic and Eurasian 
Languages and Literatures,  
University of Kansas, 
ajakobjk@ku.edu