If you have a good Turkish dictionary and if you have some some time maybe you could help us.

We need to know which Turkish words are understandable for native English speakers when they see them written.

Here are a few examples:

yoğurt
doktor
patates
domates
televizyon
radyo

I think any English native speaker would understand these Turkish words by default. We need to create a whole reference list of such words. The criteria is the ordinary man on the street. So while you might be a highly educated person the important thing is that the average English speaker gets the meainings as well.

This issue was discussed here but we need more than one independent list.
http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_6_601

Could you please check your whole Turkish-English dictionary and write a list here. No problem if you cant type in Turkish charaters. Regards.

If you're talking about the average English man on the street, I can guarantee he'd understand bira and kebap I'll add some more serious suggestions later.

Thank you Natlisa for your contribution. I think when guessing what would be understandable or not it is possible t miss a huge number of words. Thats why actually we need the whole dictionary to be checked.

I won't volunteer to do the whole dictionary, but why doesn't everyone take a letter from the dictionary each? i.e. I'm more than happy to go through my Turkish dictionary and tell you every word beginning with "A" that would make sense to a native English speaker.

Alkol, -lü Alcohol ~ik, alcoholic
Ambargo Embargo
Anormal abnormal
Antrasit anthracite
Apartıman, apartman apartment, block of flats
Asid acid
Atlet athlete

This is from my 'Concise Oxford Turkish Dictionary' which I've had since 1993!! I'll have a look through it again and add more later.

-tren
-minibüs
-garden parti
-sosyoloji, psikoloji....most words ending with "oloji"
-futbol...names of most other sports kinds
-kırık...my theory is English word "crack" comes from kırık
-magazin
-sinema
-WC
-demokrasi
-normal
-pistol
-simetrik
-asimetrik
-terör
-terörist
-modern
-çay
-eskort

-bar


hehe thats the only one i can think of at the mo hihi typical me eh...

oh yeah... have we had

-park

??

This is where I'm up to with the "A"s. I've already put the equivalents, but I won't from now on.

Abu Dabi – Abu Dhabi
adres – address
Afganistan – Afghanistan
Afrika – Africa
Ağustos – August
ah – ah! Oh!
ajan – agent
akvaryum – aquarium
alarm – alarm, warning
alaturka – in a the Turkish way
albüm – album
albumin – albumin
alerji – allergy
allerjik – allergic
alfabe – alphabet
alfabetik – alphabetic
alkalik – alkaline
alkol – alcohol
alkolik – alcoholic
Allah – Allah
Almanya – Germany
alo – hello
amatör – amateur
ambargo – embargo
ambülans – ambulance
Amerika – America
amiral – admiral
amnezi – amnesia
ampul – ampule
analiz – analysis
analoji – analogy
anatomi – anatomy
Angola – Angola
anormal – abnormal
ansiklopedi – encyclopedia
Antarktik – Antarctic
anten – antenna
antibiyotik – antibiotic
antidemokratik – antidemocratic
antifriz – antifreeze


Now I'll continue with the As

Natlisa,
thank you very much for taking the time. This list will be used when writing some lessons for this website. Cheers.

Anybody else is welcome to create another independent list. It is important not to look to other's lists since we will compare them later on.