Turkish

[Jim Rader]

Kosovo had a Turkish-speaking minority into the 1980's.  If I recall
the _Encyclopaedia of Islam_ correctly, Prizren before the collapse
of Yugoslavia was the only trilingual city in the Balkans, having
some street signs in Serbian, Albanian, and Turkish and a Turkish
population of about 30,000.  What has become of these people
since 1991 I have no idea.  Turkish speakers in Serbia and
Macedonia generally have declined in numbers since World War II
through emigration to Turkey and Western Europe.  I believe there
are figures in _The Turkic Peoples of the World_, ed. Margaret
Bainbridge, 1993.

Jim Rader

> Some history books seem to say that Turkish Thrace spoke largely Greek and
> Bulgarian right up to the suburbs or walls of Constantinople, until a big
> exchange of populations in the 1920's.

> On BBC TV (=UK TV) news from Kosovo during the recent Kosovo troubles I saw
> road signs in various languages including Turkish (e.g. {U"sku"b} for
> {Skopje}). Is there still an outlier of Turkish speech there, or what?

[Anthony Appleyard]