I am coming close to the end of my study of the Turkish-English dictionary, which I got only a short while ago (”Intermingling,” December 9, 2011). To be sure that I miss as few Turkish words that can also be found in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (BCS), I am going through it page by page. The spelling is often confounding, and the exercise takes a lot of patience. Anyhow, there are many matches. Quite a number of them are rather surprising. But the overall pattern of matches tells an interesting story about the civilizing influence of the Turks upon the Slavs over some five centuries in the Balkans, from the Fourteenth till the Nineteenth Century. For instance, Turkish words for “bed,” “mattress,” “sheet,” “pillow,” and “quilt” can be found across most of the BCS region. And so can words for “coat,” “boot,” “sock,” and “belt.” Perhaps more important, many of the matches have to do with the technology of the time, such as “steel,” “copper,” and “tin” as key materials, as well as tools like “hammer,” “drill,” and “file.” In short, the matches go far from words like “kebab,” “baklava,” and “Turkish delight,” which would suggest an entirely different influence of the Turks upon the Slavs. I would love to see a list of words the Turks took from the Slavs in the Balkans, though. The match of matches would be wonderful to behold, I am quite sure.