Gagauz: A Turkic Language in a Balkan Matrix

The Balkan Peninsula has a rich linguistic inheritance - it is home to many languages that have been spoken by populations living in close proximity with each other over long periods of time, resulting in structural and lexical conversion. This phenomenon is known as Balkan convergence or Balkanism. Professors Victor A. Friedman and Brian D. Joseph just published the first ever English book on this matter (which is open source and available here), and to celebrate this new resource we’d like to feature how Balkan convergence presents itself in a little known language outside of the very southeastern tip of the region - Gagauz. 

The Gagauz lcanguage, spoken by an Orthodox Christian Turkic ethnic group mostly in Southern Moldova, and southwestern Ukraine, is a particularly interesting case of Balkan convergence. Historians consider the Gagauz people descendants from Turkish mercenaries who were brought to Dobrudja (modern day North Bulgaria and East Romania) from Byzantine Anatolia by emperor Michael VIII in the mid-thirteenth century as a security measure for the empire against the Tatars of the Golden Horde. Their language, Gagauz, is a Turkic language that has been spoken for centuries in close contact with Slavic, Romance, and Greek languages, and in the process, it has undergone profound structural reshaping. These neighboring languages have not only influenced Gagauz lexically (with borrowed vocabulary), but also changed the grammar of the language. To speak Gagauz is to speak a Turkic language with the grammatical rhythm of Indo-European languages. Some Gagauz speakers see their language as a dialect of Turkish and refer to is as 'bizim türkçemiz‘ (meaning 'our Turkish').

For example, Gagauz does have vowel harmony in many words, but it is less consistent than in neighboring Turkish. Front-back harmony is often violated in borrowed words and in morphologically complex forms. For example, where standard Turkish would require strict harmony in suffixation (ev-ler ‘houses’, göz-ler ‘eyes’), with the exception of a negligible number of borrowed words such as saat-ler ‘clocks’, Gagauz speakers sometimes produce disharmonic forms such as ev-lar or göz-lar, reflecting either incomplete harmony or leveling across paradigms. Palatalization before front vowels is more variable than in Anatolian varieties, influenced by the surrounding Slavic systems.

Example of a Gagauz Speaker

Morphologically, Gagauz remains an agglutinative language with suffixal marking for case, number, and possession. However, the case system is notably reduced compared to Ottoman Turkish. The genitive and dative have partially merged in function, and analytic constructions are often preferred. For example, possessive relationships are sometimes expressed through prepositions and fixed phrases borrowed from Slavic rather than through possessive suffixes, or the order of the genitive-construction is reversed to reflect that of Slavic languages. For example:

Ex: The girl's father ...

Gagauz: Bubası kızın ...

Buba-sı father-POSS3SG

kız-ın girl-GEN

Turkish: Kızın babası ...*

Kız-ın girl-GEN

baba-sı father-POSS3SG

*(The other order can also occur in Turkish, but this ordering is more common)

Russian: Папа девочки...

Папа father

девочк-и. girl-GEN

The verb system maintains Turkic tense–aspect–mood categories, but with interesting Balkan innovations: periphrastic constructions with auxiliaries have increased, paralleling Slavic and Balkan Romance developments. Passive and reflexive forms are often built with auxiliary verbs rather than inflectional morphology, especially in colloquial speech.

Syntactically, the most striking developments involve subordinate clauses and constituent order. Traditional Turkic languages rely heavily on nonfinite verbal forms - participles, converbs, and nominalized verbs - to build subordinate clauses. Gagauz still uses these forms, but their frequency is reduced, and finite subordination introduced by complementizers is more common. Clauses equivalent to “I know that he came” often use finite verbs with a borrowed complementizer, rather than a nominalized verb. This shift aligns Gagauz with its Balkan neighbors, which tend to favor finite subordination.

Constituent order is similarly flexible. While Turkic typology strongly generally favors verb-finality (subject-object-verb, SOV), Gagauz has SVO (subject-verb-obect) and VSO (verb-subject-object) patterns, especially in declarative main clauses, mirroring surrounding Balkan languages. In embedded clauses, focus constructions, and interrogatives, SVO can alternate with SOV depending on pragmatic structure. For example:

Ex 1: 'It does not feel like [= that there is] autumn’

Gagauz: Hisedılmes ki vardır sonbaar

Hised-ıl-mes feel-PASS-NEG.AOR

ki COMP

vardır exist.cop.3sg

sonbaar autumn

Turkish: Sonbahar olduğu hissedilmiyor

Sonbahar autumn

ol-duğ-u to.be-NOM-CM

hissed-il-mi-yor. feel-PAS-NEG-PROG

Russian: Осень не чувствуется

Осень autum

не NEG.PARTICLE

чувств-ует-ся. feel-3.sg.PROG-PASS

Ex 2: 'You were at home'

Gagauz: Siz idınız evde

siz you

i-dı-nız COP-PST-2PL

ev-de house-LOC

Turkish: Siz evdeydiniz

siz you

ev-de-ydi-niz. house-LOC- v

Russian: Вы были дома

Вы you

был-и to.be-PST-PL

дом-а house-LOC

The grammar of Gagauz illustrates how a Turkic language can be drawn into the Balkan Sprachbund. It remains structurally Turkic but has adjusted its phonology, morphology, and syntax to fit the shared areal mold. This is linguistic adaptation at the deepest level - not just borrowing words, but reshaping the grammar to match the rhythm of the surrounding speech communities.

Abbreviation Glossary:

COP : Copula (akin to 'to be' as in '=' in English)

GEN : Genitive Case

LOC : Locative Case

NEG : Negation

PASS : Passive Voice

PL : Plural

POSS : Possessive Marker

PROG : Progressive Tense

PST : Past Tense

SG : Singular