Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics 61 Loanwords and Soap Operas: the Return of Turkish to the Language Scene of Bosnia and Herzegovina Edin Dupanović, Kulen Vakuf-Orašac Primary School Bosnia and Herzegovina Contact: evanath@hotmail.com Abstract Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian borrowed a considerable number of words from the Turkish language during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. In the ensuing period, some of these loanwords were so thoroughly adapted that the speakers of Bosnian no longer recognise them as such. Some of them underwent a shift from standard to present-day colloquial usage, and some became obsolete. At the moment, Turkish is making a comeback to Bosnia and Herzegovina in two ways: through Turkish private schools and through Turkish soap operas being broadcast in the region. This preliminary research concerns the latter; it aims tostart examining how Turkish soap operasinfluence the Bosnian language and its speakers, try to predict further developments, and suggest further research. Methodologically, the research consisted of conducting interviews with speakers of Bosnian who watch Turkish soap operas. We used a questionnaire which was previously given to the subjects to think about the questions and examples. The aim is to find out to what degree participants perceive loanwords, how their awareness of them changes, whether they notice the differences of usage in Bosnian and present-day Turkish, whether elderly subjects perceive loanwords words no longer used in Bosnian, and if they now use more loanwords in their own speech. The research was conducted in 2011 (57 interviews) and 2013 (23 interviews).