Altaic languages

• 1. Origins And Early Proposals

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  In 1730, a Swedish officer named Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a proposal grouping Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages together. He had traveled across the eastern Russian Empire while held as a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War. His work may have been based on an earlier text from 1661 by Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur titled Genealogy of the Turkmens. Nicolaes Witsen wrote about this unified language group in 1692, though his source remains unclear. The name Altaic comes from the Altai mountain range located in East-Central Asia. This region sits at the approximate center of the geographic spread for these three main families. Later proposals to include Korean and Japanese into what became known as Macro-Altaic sparked immediate controversy among scholars. Most proponents of the original theory continued to support including Korean but fewer accepted Japanese. Some early attempts also included Ainuic, yet this idea never gained wide acceptance even among Altaicists themselves.

• 2. Scholarly Rejection And Sprachbund Theory

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  Starting in the late 1950s, linguists began challenging the genetic connection between Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages. Gerard Clauson published his case against the Altaic theory in 1956, followed by Gerhard Doerfer in 1963 and Alexander Shcherbak in 1963. These critics argued that shared words and features were mostly borrowings rather than evidence of common ancestry. They noted that chance resemblances could explain many similarities found across the groups. By the 1960s, most comparative linguists had rejected the proposal after finding no valid cognates or hypothesized sound shifts. Asya Pereltsvaig observed in 2011 that genetically related languages tend to diverge over time, whereas Turkic and Mongolic have become more similar through contact. The Stele of Yisüngge from 1224 or 1225 AD shows early written Mongolic, while Orkhon inscriptions dated 720, 735 AD reveal Proto-Turkic. These records suggest convergence rather than divergence between the families. R.M.W. Dixon stated in 1997 that sufficient criteria do not exist to justify a genetic relationship here.

• 3. Earliest Written Attestations

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  The earliest known texts in a Turkic language are the Orkhon inscriptions dating from 720 to 735 AD. Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen deciphered them in 1893 during a scholarly race with Wilhelm Radloff. Anna Dybo identified several dozen Proto-Turkic exotisms in Chinese sources like Shizi from 330 BC and the Book of Han from 111 AD. The first Tungusic language attested is Jurchen, used by ancestors of the Manchus. A writing system for it was devised in 1119 AD, with an inscription known from 1185. Middle Mongol appears first in an inscription dated 1224 or 1225 AD called the Stele of Yisüngge. The Secret History of the Mongols was written in 1228. An earlier Para-Mongolic text exists as the Memorial for Yelü Yanning from 986 AD. The Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi discovered in 1975 dates back to 604, 620 AD. Japanese first appears in names on the Inariyama Sword from the 5th century AD. The Kojiki dates from 712 AD, followed by the Nihon shoki completed in 720. Korean is copiously attested from the mid-15th century using Hangul.

• 4. The Macro-Altaic Expansion Debate

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  In 1857, Austrian scholar Anton Boller suggested adding Japanese to the Ural-Altaic family. G.J. Ramstedt and E.D. Polivanov advocated including Korean during the 1920s. Roy Andrew Miller published Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages in 1971, convincing most Altaicists that Japanese belonged within the group. Nicholas Poppe considered three possibilities regarding Korean's relationship to Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic in his 1960 work. J. Marshall Unger emphasized comparing Tungusic with the common ancestor of Korean and Japanese before seeking connections with other families in 1990. Martine Robbeets proposed in 2017 that Japanese originated as a hybrid language after migrating south into modern Liaoning province. She argued proto-Japanese and proto-Korean resulted from fusion between proto-Altaic speakers and an agricultural community speaking an Austronesian-like language. Yurayong and Szeto discussed convergence stages for Koreanic and Japonic in 2020, noting they remain so different from Core Altaic languages that independent grammar types exist. Alexander Vovin later became a critic after previously supporting the theory.

• 5. Modern Genetic And Lexical Arguments

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  Sergei Starostin published a comparative lexical analysis of Altaic languages in 1991 claiming about 15, 20% shared cognates within a Swadesh-Yakhontov list. The Etymological Dictionary by Starostin, Dybo, and Mudrak included 2,800 proposed cognate sets plus phonological arguments in 2003. They listed 144 items of shared basic vocabulary including words for eye, ear, neck, bone, blood, water, stone, sun, and two. Robbeets and Bouckaert used Bayesian phylolinguistic methods in 2018 to argue for coherence among Transeurasian languages. Kassian et al analyzed a 110-item word list in 2021 indicating partial support with Korean seemingly excluded. Their results showed Korean emerges as either unrelated or impervious due to major mutations in non-initial consonants. Lars Johanson called for muting polemic debates in 2010 while acknowledging ongoing disagreement. Stefan Georg criticized Starostin's book in both 2004 and 2005 reviews published in Diachnica journal.

• 6. Hypothesized Homelands And Dispersals

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  Some scholars hypothesize a Uralic and Altaic homeland located in Central Asian steppes. Juha Janhunen suggested ancestral languages were spoken in present-day North Korea, Southern Manchuria, and Southeastern Mongolia. Chaubey and van Driem linked dispersal patterns to haplogroup C2 (M217) accounting for 11% of Korean paternal lineages. This Y-chromosomal marker persists at just 6% frequency in Japan yet may trace language introduction to the archipelago. Supporters formerly dated Proto-Altaic around 4000 BC but now place it near 5000 BC or 6000 BC. This would make Altaic older than Indo-European which dates roughly between 3000 and 4000 BC according to mainstream hypotheses. The prehistory of peoples speaking these languages remains largely unknown compared to families like Indo-European or Austronesian where substantial hypotheses exist. Elena Kuzmina noted Altaic could be considerably younger than Afroasiatic dating back approximately 10,000 BCE depending on source interpretations.