Altaic languages

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East, North, Central, and West Asia and Eastern Europe
Linguistic classification: Proposed major language family
ISO 639-2 / 5: tut
Glottolog: None
Distribution of the Altaic languages across Eurasia.

Altaic /ælˈtɨk/ is a proposed language family of central Eurasia. Various versions include the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic languages.[1] These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe.[2] The group is named after the Altai Mountains, a mountain range in Central Asia.

The Altaic language families share numerous characteristics. The debate is over the origin of their similarities. One camp, often called the "Altaicists", views these similarities as arising from common descent from a proto-Altaic language spoken several thousand years ago. The other camp, often called the "anti-Altaicists", views these similarities as arising from areal interaction between the language groups concerned. Some linguists believe the case for either interpretation is about equally strong; they have been called the "skeptics".[3]

Another view accepts Altaic as a valid family but includes in it only Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic. This view was widespread prior to the 1960s, but has almost no supporters among specialists today.[4] The expanded grouping, including Korean and Japanese, came to be known as "Macro-Altaic", leading to the designation of the smaller grouping as "Micro-Altaic" by retronymy. Most proponents of Altaic continue to support the inclusion of Korean and Japanese.[5]

Micro-Altaic includes about 66 living languages,[6] to which Macro-Altaic would add Korean, Japanese, and the Ryukyuan languages for a total of about 74. (These are estimates, depending on what is considered a language and what is considered a dialect. They do not include earlier states of language, such as Middle Mongol or Old Japanese.) Micro-Altaic has a total of about 348 million speakers today,[citation needed] Macro-Altaic about 558 million.

History of the Altaic idea[edit]

The Altai Mountains give their name to the proposed language family.

The idea that the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are closely related to each other was allegedly first published in 1730 by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, a Swedish officer who traveled in the eastern Russian Empire while a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War. However, as has been pointed out by Alexis Manaster Ramer and Paul Sidwell (1997), von Strahlenberg actually opposed the idea of a closer relationship among the languages which later became known as "Altaic".[citation needed] Von Strahlenberg's classification was the first attempt at classification of a large number of languages some of which are Altaic.[7]


Finno-Ugric and Samoyed eventually came[when?] to be grouped in a separate family, known as Uralic (though doubts long persisted about its validity). The original Altaic family thus came to be known as the Ural–Altaic.[9] In the "Ural–Altaic" nomenclature, Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic are regarded as "Uralic", whereas Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic are regarded as "Altaic" - while Korean is sometimes considered Altaic, as is, less often, Japanese.

For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the theory of a common Ural–Altaic family was widespread, based on such shared features as vowel harmony and agglutination. However, while the Ural–Altaic hypothesis can still be found in encyclopedias, atlases, and similar general references, it has generally been abandoned by linguists. For instance it was characterized by Sergei Starostin as "an idea now completely discarded".[10]

In 1857, the Austrian scholar Anton Boller suggested adding Japanese to the Ural–Altaic family.[11] In the 1920s, G.J. Ramstedt and E.D. Polivanov advocated the inclusion of Korean. However, Ramstedt's two-volume magnum opus, Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft ('Introduction to Altaic Linguistics'), published in 1952–1957, rejected the Ural–Altaic hypothesis and included Korean in Altaic, an inclusion followed by most leading Altaicists to date. The first volume of his work, Lautlehre ('Phonology'), contained the first comprehensive attempt to identify regular correspondences among the sound systems within the Altaic language families.

In 1960, Nicholas Poppe published what was in effect a heavily revised version of Ramstedt’s volume on phonology[12] that has since set the standard in Altaic studies. Poppe considered the issue of the relationship of Korean to Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic not settled.[13] In his view, there were three possibilities: (1) Korean did not belong with the other three genealogically, but had been influenced by an Altaic substratum; (2) Korean was related to the other three at the same level they were related to each other; (3) Korean had split off from the other three before they underwent a series of characteristic changes.

Development of the Macro-Altaic theory[edit]

Roy Andrew Miller's 1971 book Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages convinced most Altaicists that Japanese also belonged to Altaic.[14] Since then, the standard set of languages included in Macro-Altaic has been Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese.


Anti-Altaicists Gerard Clauson (1956), Gerhard Doerfer (1963), and Alexander Shcherbak argued that the words and features shared by Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages were for the most part borrowings and that the rest could be attributed to chance resemblances. They noted that there was little vocabulary shared by Turkic and Tungusic languages, though more shared with Mongolic languages. They reasoned that if all three families had a common ancestor, we should expect losses to happen at random, not only at the geographical margins of the family; and that the observed pattern is consistent with borrowing. Furthermore, they argued that many of the typological features of the supposed Altaic languages, such as agglutinative morphology and SOV word order, usually co-occur in languages. In sum, the idea was that Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages form a Sprachbund – the result of convergence through intensive borrowing and long contact among speakers of languages that are not necessarily closely related.


Starostin's (1991) lexicostatistical research claimed that the proposed Altaic groups shared about 15–20% of potential cognates within a 110-word Swadesh-Yakhontov list (e.g. Turkic–Mongolic 20%, Turkic–Tungusic 18%, Turkic–Korean 17%, Mongolic–Tungusic 22%, Mongolic–Korean 16%, Tungusic–Korean 21%). Altogether, Starostin concluded that the Altaic grouping was substantiated, though "older than most other language families in Eurasia, such as Indo-European or Finno-Ugric, and this is the reason why the modern Altaic languages preserve few common elements".

Unger (1990) advocates a family consisting of Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic languages but not Turkic or Mongolic; and Doerfer (1988) rejects all the genetic claims over these major groups. In 2003, Claus Schönig published a critical overview of the history of the Altaic hypothesis up to that time. He concluded:

Generally, the more carefully the areal factor has been investigated, the smaller the size of the residue open to the genetic explanation has tended to become. According to many scholars it only comprises a small number of monosyllabic lexical roots, including the personal pronouns and a few other deictic and auxiliary items. For these, other possible explanations have also been proposed. Most importantly, the 'Altaic' languages do not seem to share a common basic vocabulary of the type normally present in cases of genetic relationship.[16]

In 2003, "An Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages" was published by Starostin, Dybo, and Mudrak. It contains 2800 proposed cognate sets, a set of sound laws based on those proposed sets, and a number of grammatical correspondences, as well as a few important changes to the reconstruction of Proto-Altaic. For example, while most of today's Altaic languages have vowel harmony, Proto-Altaic as reconstructed by Starostin et al. lacked it—instead various vowel assimilations between the first and second syllables of words occurred in Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic. It tries hard to distinguish loans between Turkic and Mongolic and between Mongolic and Tungusic from cognates; and it suggests words that occur in Turkic and Tungusic but not Mongolic. All other combinations between the five branches also occur in the book.[17] It lists 144 items of shared basic vocabulary (most of them already present in Starostin 1991), including words for such items as 'eye', 'ear', 'neck', 'bone', 'blood', 'water', 'stone', 'sun', and 'two'.[18] This work has not changed the minds of any of the principal authors in the field, however. The debate continues unabated – e.g. S. Georg 2004, A. Vovin 2005, S. Georg 2005 (anti-Altaic); S. Starostin 2005, V. Blažek 2006, M. Robbeets 2007, A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008 (pro-Altaic).

According to Roy Andrew Miller (1996: 98-99), the Clauson–Doerfer critique of Altaic relies exclusively on lexicon, whereas the fundamental evidence for Altaic consists in verbal morphology. Lars Johanson (2010: 15-17) suggests that a resolution of the Altaic dispute may yet come from the examination of verbal morphology and calls for a muting of the polemic. In his view, "The dark age of pro and contra slogans, unfair polemics, and humiliations is not yet completely over and done with, but there seems to be some hope for a more constructive discussion" (ib. 17).

Postulated Urheimat[edit]

The earliest known texts in a Turkic language are the Orkhon inscriptions, of which the earliest dates from around 720 AD and the latest from 735 AD (Miller 1971: 3). They were deciphered in 1893 by the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen in a scholarly race with his rival, the Germano-Russian linguist Wilhelm Radloff. However, Radloff was the first to publish the inscriptions.

The first Tungusic language to be attested is Jurchen, the language of the ancestors of the Manchus. A writing system for it was devised in 1119 AD and an inscription using this system is known from 1185 (see List of Jurchen inscriptions).

The earliest Mongolic language of which we have written evidence is known as Middle Mongol. It is first attested by an inscription dated to 1224 or 1225 AD and by the Secret History of the Mongols, written in 1228 (see Mongolic languages). The earliest Para-Mongolic text is the Memorial for Yelu Yanning, written in the Khitan Large Script and dated to 986 AD.

The prehistory of the peoples speaking these languages is largely unknown. Whereas for certain other language families, such as the speakers of Indo-European, Uralic, and Austronesian, we are able to frame substantial hypotheses, in the case of the proposed Altaic family everything remains to be done.[19] In the absence of written records, there are several ways to study the (pre)history of a people:

  • Identification of archaeological cultures: the material remains found at dwelling sites, burial grounds, and other places where people left traces of their activity.
  • Genetics, in particular the study of ancient DNA.


Macro-Altaic Urheimat[edit]

Japanese is first attested in a few short inscriptions from the 5th century AD, such as the Inariyama Sword. The first substantial text in Japanese, however, is the Kojiki, which dates from 712 AD. It is followed by the Nihon shoki, completed in 720, and that by the Man'yōshū, which dates from c. 771-785, but includes material that is about 400 years earlier (Miller 1971: 4).

The most important text for the study of early Korean is the Hyangga, a collection of 25 poems, of which some go back to the Three Kingdoms period (57–668 AD), but are preserved in an orthography that only goes back to the 9th century AD (Miller 1996: 60). Korean is copiously attested from the mid-15th century on in the phonetically precise Hangul system of writing (ib. 61).

According to Juha Janhunen, the ancestral languages of Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese were spoken in a relatively small area comprising present-day North Korea, Southern Manchuria, and Southeastern Mongolia (Johanson and Robbeets 2010: 2). However Janhunen (1992) is skeptical about an affiliation of Japanese to Altaic languages, while Róna-Tas (1998: 77) remarked that a relationship between Altaic and Japanese, if it ever existed, must be more remote than the relationship of any two of the Indo-European languages. Ramsey (2004: 340) stated that "the genetic relationship between Korean and Japanese, if it in fact exists, is probably more complex and distant than we can imagine on the basis of our present state of knowledge", a concept later restated by Lee (2011).

Supporters of Altaic formerly set the date of the Proto-Altaic language at around 4000 BC, but today at around 5000 BC (Starostin et al. 2003) or 6000 BC (Kuz'mina 2007: 364). This would make it a language family about as old as Indo-European (4000 to 7,000 BC according to several hypotheses cited in Mallory 1997: 106) but considerably younger than Afroasiatic (c. 10,000 BC according to Diakonoff 1988: 33n, 11,000 to 16,000 BC according to Ehret 2002: 35–36).

List of Altaicists and critics of Altaic[edit]

Note: This list is limited to linguists who have worked specifically on the Altaic problem since the publication of the first volume of Ramstedt's Einführung in 1952. The dates given are those of works concerning Altaic. For Altaicists, the version of Altaic they favor is given at the end of the entry, if other than the prevailing one of Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic–Korean–Japanese.


Major critics of Altaic[edit]

Alternative hypotheses[edit]

  • Joseph Greenberg (2000–2002). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and Korean–Japanese–Ainu, grouped in Eurasiatic.
  • Lars Johanson (2010). Agnostic, proponent of a "Transeurasian" verbal morphology not necessarily genealogically linked.
  • James Patrie (1982). Turkic–Mongolic–Tungusic and Korean–Japanese–Ainu, grouped in a common taxon (cf. John C. Street 1962).
  • J. Marshall Unger (1990). Tungusic–Korean–Japanese ("Macro-Tungusic"), with Turkic and Mongolic as separate language families.

Comparative grammar[edit]

Reconstructed phonology[edit]

Based on the proposed correspondences listed below, the following phoneme inventory has been reconstructed for the hypothetical Proto(-Macro)-Altaic language (taken from Blažek's [2006] summary of the newest Altaic etymological dictionary [Starostin et al. 2003] and transcribed into the IPA):


Bilabial Alveolar or dental Alveolopalatal Postalveolar  Palatal    Velar  
Plosives aspirated /pʰ/ /tʰ/ /kʰ/
voiceless /p/ /t/ /k/
voiced /b/ /d/ /ɡ/
Affricates aspirated /tʃʰ/
voiceless /tʃ/
voiced /dʒ/
Fricatives voiceless /s/ /ʃ/
voiced /z/-1
Trills -/r/-2 /rʲ/
Approximants /l/ /lʲ/ -/j/-2

1 This phoneme only occurred at the beginnings of words.
2 These phonemes only occurred in the interior of words.


Front Back
unrounded rounded
Close /i/ /y/ /u/
Mid /e/ /ø/ /o/
Near-open /æ/
Open /a/

It is not clear whether /æ/, /ø/, /y/ were monophthongs as shown here (presumably [æ œ~ø ʏ~y]) or diphthongs ([i̯a~i̯ɑ i̯ɔ~i̯o i̯ʊ~i̯u]); the evidence is equivocal. In any case, however, they only occurred in the first (and sometimes only) syllable of any word.



As reconstructed by Starostin et al. (2003), Proto-Altaic was a pitch accent or tone language; at least the first and probably every syllable could have a high or a low pitch.

Sound correspondences[edit]





/pʰ/ 0-1, /j/-, /p/ /h/-2, /j/-, -/b/-, -/h/-2, -/b/ /p/ /p/ /p/
/p/ /b/ /b/-6, /h/-2, /b/ /p/-, /b/
/b/ /b/-, -/h/-, -/b/-9, -/b/ /b/ /p/, -/b/- /p/-, /w/, /b/10, /p/11
/tʰ/ /t/-, /d/-3, /t/ /t/, /tʃ/4, -/d/ /t/ /t/ /t/
/t/ /d/-, /t/ /t/, /tʃ/4 /d/-, /dʒ/-7, /t/ /t/, -/r/- /t/-, /d/-, /t/
/d/ /j/-, /d/ /d/, /dʒ/4 /d/ /d/-, /t/-, /t/, /j/
/tʃ/ /d/-, /tʃ/ /d/-, /dʒ/-4, /tʃ/ /s/-, -/dʒ/-, -/s/- /t/-, -/s/-
/dʒ/ /j/ /dʒ/ /dʒ/ /d/-, /j/
/kʰ/ /k/ /k/-, -/k/-, -/ɡ/-5, -/ɡ/ /x/-, /k/, /x/ /k/, /h/ /k/
/k/ /k/-, /k/, /ɡ/8 /k/-, /ɡ/ /k/-, /ɡ/-, /ɡ/ /k/-, -/h/-, -0-, -/k/
/ɡ/ /ɡ/ /ɡ/-, -/h/-, -/ɡ/-5, -/ɡ/ /ɡ/ /k/, -/h/-, -0- /k/-, /k/, 012
/s/ /s/ /s/ /s/ /s/-, /h/-, /s/ /s/
/z/ /j/ /s/
/ʃ/ /s/-, /tʃ/-13, /s/ /s/-, /tʃ/-13, /s/ /ʃ/
/m/ /b/-, -/m/- /m/ /m/ /m/ /m/
/n/ /j/-, -/n/- /n/ /n/ /n/ /n/
/nʲ/ /j/-, /nʲ/ /dʒ/-, /j/, /n/ /nʲ/ /n/-, /nʲ/14 /m/-, /n/, /m/
/ŋ/ 0-, /j/-, /ŋ/ 0-, /j/-, /ɡ/-15, /n/-16, /ŋ/, /n/, /m/, /h/ /ŋ/ /n/-, /ŋ/, 0 0-, /n/-, /m/-7, /m/, /n/
/r/ /r/ /r/ /r/ /r/ /r/, /t/4, 15
/rʲ/ /rʲ/ /r/, /t/
/l/ /j/-, /l/ /n/-, /l/-, /l/ /l/ /n/-, /r/ /n/-, /r/
/lʲ/ /j/-, /lʲ/ /d/-, /dʒ/-4, /l/ /n/-, /s/
/j/ /j/ /j/, /h/ /j/ /j/, 0 /j/, 0

4 Before /i/.
7 Before /æ/, /ø/ or /y/.
10 Before /a/, /ə/, or any vowel followed by /j/.
11 Before /j/, or /i/ and then another vowel.
12 When preceded by a vowel preceded by /i/.
13 Before /a/.
14 Starostin et al. (2003) follow a minority opinion (Vovin 1993) in interpreting the sound of the Middle Korean letter as [nʲ] or [ɲ] rather than [z]. (Dybo & Starostin 2008:footnote 50)
15 Before /u/.
16 Before /a/, /o/, or /e/.



first s. second s. first syllable
/a/ /a/ /a/, /a/1, /ʌ/1 /a/ /a/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/e/ /a/, /ɯ/ /a/, /i/ /ə/
/i/ /ɛ/, /a/ /a/, /e/ /a/, /e/, /i/ /i/
/o/ /o/, /ja/, /aj/ /a/, /i/, /e/ /ə/, /o/ /a/
/u/ /a/ /a/, /o/, /u/ /a/, /ə/, /o/, /u/ /u/
/e/ /a/ /a/, /ʌ/, /ɛ/ /a/, /e/ /e/ /a/, /e/ /a/
/e/ /ja/-, /ɛ/, /e/2 /e/, /ja/ /a/, /e/, /i/, /ɨ/ /ə/
/i/ /ja/-, /ɛ/, /e/2 /e/, /i/ /i/, /ɨ/, /a/, /e/ /i/
/o/ /ʌ/, /e/ /a/, /e/, /y/3, /ø/3 /ə/, /o/, /u/ /ə/, /a/
/u/ /ɛ/, /a/, /ʌ/ /e/, /a/, /o/3 /o/, /u/, /a/ /u/
/e/ /ɛ/, /e/2 /e/, /i/ /i/, /ɨ/ /i/
/i/ /i/ /i/, /e/1 /i/ /i/
/o/ /ɯ/ /i/ /o/, /u/, /ɨ/ /i/, /ə/
/u/ /ɯ/, /i/ /i/, /ɨ/ /u/
/e/ /ø/, /o/ /ø/, /y/, /o/ /ɨ/, /o/, /u/ /ə/
/o/ /o/ /u/ /a/, /e/ /ə/
/u/ /o/ /o/, /u/ /ə/, /o/, /u/ /u/
/i/ /y/, /u/ /y/, /ø/ /o/, /u/, /ɨ/ /u/
/o/ /ia/, /ja/, /a/1 /e/ /o/, /u/ /ə/, /o/, /u/ /a/
/u/ /e/, /a/, /ʌ/1 /a/, /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /e/, /je/ /u/
/ø/ /a/ /ia/, /ja/, /a/1 /a/, /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/ /o/, /u/, /ə/ /a/
/e/ /e/, /a/, /ʌ/1 /e/, /ø/ /o/, /u/, /je/ /ə/, /u/
/i/ /ia/, /ja/, /a/1 /i/, /e/, /ø/ /o/, /u/, /ə/ /i/
/e/ /y/, /ø/, /i/2 /ø/, /y/, /o/, /u/ /y/, /u/1 /a/, /e/, /ja/, /je/, /o/, /u/ /u/, /ə/
/i/ /y/, /ø/ /i/, /u/1 /ɨ/, /i/, /o/, /u/ /i/

1 When preceded by a bilabial consonant.
2 When followed by a trill, /l/, or /lʲ/.
3 When preceded or followed by a bilabial consonant.
4 When preceded by a fricative (/s/, /ʃ/, /x/).



á a a1 a à2 á
à a a a á à
áː a1 a à2 á
àː a a á à

² "[...] several secondary metatonic processes happened [...] in Korean, basically in the verb subsystem: all verbs have a strong tendency towards low pitch on the first syllable." (Starostin et al. 2003:135)

Morphological correspondences[edit]


nominative: - - - - - -
partitive: /ɡa/ -/ʁ/, -/ɯʁ/, -/ɡ/, -/iɡ/ *-/ʁ/ (accusative) /ɡa/ /ɡa/ (possessive)
genitive: -/nʲV/ -/ŋ/ *-/n/ -/ŋi/ -/nʲ/ /nə/, /na/, /ŋa/
dative-locative: /du/, /da/ -/ta/, -/da/, -/te/, -/de/ (locative-ablative) -/da/ (dative-locative), -/du/ (attributive) /du/ (dative), -/daː/ (locative) -/tu/ (attributive-locative)
dative-instrumental: -/nV/ -/n/, -/ɯn/, -/in/ (instrumental) /ni/ (dative-locative)
dative-directive: -/kʰV/ -/qa/, -/ke/ (dative) /kiː/ (directive)
comitative-locative: -/lV/ -/li/, -/lɯʁ/ /laː/ (locative), -/liː/ (prolative), -/luʁa/ (comitative) -/ro/ (instrumental-lative)
comitative-equative: -/tʃʰa/ -/tʃa/, -/tʃe/ (equative) /tʃa/ (ablative), /tʃa/, /tʃaʁa/ (terminative) -/tə/ (comitative)
allative: -/ɡV/ -/ʁaru/, -/ɡery/ (directive) *-/ʁa/, -/a/ /ɡiː/ (allative) -/ei/
directive: -/rV/ -/ʁaru/, -/ɡery/ -/ru/ -/ro/ (lative)
instrumental-ablative: -/dʒV/ *?-/ja/, -/a/ terminal dative /dʒi/ /ju/ (ablative)
plural: -/tʰ/- *-/t/ -/d/ -/ta/, -/te/, -/tan/, -/ten/ *-/tɨr/ *-/tati/
plural: -/l/- *-/lar/ *-/nar/ -/l/, -/sal/ *-/ra/


Selected cognates[edit]

Personal pronouns[edit]


"I" Old Chinese: */ŋa/ */nad/-, -/m/- (oblique) /nà/ (Korean: 나)
/ú/ (Sino-Korean: */我/, */吾/), yi (矣)1
/a/- (Sino-Japanese: */我,吾/, - )
"thou" (nominative) /si/ and/or /tʰi/ /se/ (Turkic: Sen, Сен) */tʃi/ (Mongolian: чи) /si/ (Manchu: Si, Nanai: Си) /-si/, /-sya/1 /si/
"thee" (oblique cases) /sin/- and/or /tʰin/- /sen/ (Turkic: Sen, Сен)  ?*/tʃin/-
"thou" Proto-Tibeto-Burman /ná/ -/ŋ/ */nè/ (Korean: 너) /ná/ (Japanese: な */那/)
"we" (nominative) /bà/ /bi-rʲ/ (Turkic: Biz, Біз) */ba/ (Mongolian: Бид) /bue/ (Nanai: Буэ Manchu: be) /ú-rí/ (Korean: 우리,울 */于尸/) /bà/
"us" (oblique cases) /myn/- */man/- /myn/- (Manchu: muse)
"ye" (nominative) /sV/ and/or /tʰV/ /si-rʲ/ (Turkic: Siz, Сіз) */ta/ (Mongolian: та нар) /suː/ (Manchu: suwe)


Other basic vocabulary[edit]

The following table is a brief selection of further proposed cognates in basic vocabulary across the Altaic family (from Starostin et al. [2003]). Their reconstructions and equivalences are not widely accepted by the mainstream linguists.

eye /næ̀ː/ /ni-dy/ /nʲia-sa/5 /nú-n/ /mà/-
star /pʰǿlʲo/ /jul-durʲ/ /ho-dun/ /osi/4 /pjɨːr/ /pə́tsí/
oath, god, sky[20] /tàŋɡiri/ /teŋri/ /taŋgarag/ /taŋgura/ /tiŋkir/

4 This is in the Jurchen language. In modern Manchu it is usiha.
5 This is disputed by Georg (2004),[21] who states: "The traditional Tungusological reconstruction *yāsa [ = /jaːsa/] cannot be replaced by the nasal-initial one espoused here, needed for the comparison." However, Starostin (2005)[22] mentions evidence from several Tungusic languages cited by Starostin et al. (2003). Georg (2005)[23] does not accept this, referring to Georg (1999/2000) and a then upcoming paper.[24]

Numerals and related words[edit]


front /emo/ /øm-gen/ "upper part of breast" /emy/- /emu/~/ume/ "1" /maen-/~/môn-chô "first of all"26 /upe/ "upper"
/mape/ "front"
single, one of a pair /sǿna/ /sɯŋar/ "one of a pair" /son-du-/ "odd" 1 /hə̀nàh/ "1"
or /hə̀t-/ 1
/sa/- "together, reciprocally"
2 /tybu/ 2 /dʒiw-rin/~/dʒui-rin/ "2 (feminine)"3 /dʒube/ /tuː/, /tuː-rh/4
pair, couple /pʰø̀kʰe/ /eki/ "2", /ekirʲ/ "twins"; ?/(j)ɛɡir-mi/ "20" /(h)ekire/ "twins"
3 /ŋy/ /o-turʲ/ "30"5 /gu-rban/; /ɡu-tʃin/ "30" 6 /mi/-7
5 /tʰu/ /ta-bun/; /ta-bin/ "50"11 /tu-nʲɡa/ /tà/- /i-tu-/12
6 /nʲu/ /dʒi-rɡu-/; /dʒi-ran/ "60"13 /nʲu-ŋu-/ 14 /mu/-
8 /dʒa/ /dʒa-pkun/ /jè-t-/17 /da/-
9 /kʰeɡVnV/ /xegyn/ /kəkənə/
10 /tʃøbe/ or /tøbe/ /dʒuba-n/ /təwə/18,/-so/"-0"/i-so/50
many, a big number /dʒøːrʲo/ /jyːrʲ/ "100" 19 /jér(h)/ "10" /jə̀rə̀/ "many" /jə̀rə̀/- "10,000"
/jə̀rə̀/ "many"
/pʰVbV/ /oː-n/ "10" /ha-rban/ "10", /ha-na/ "all" 20 -/pə/, -/pua/ "-00"21
20 /kʰyra/ /ɡɯrk/ or /kɯrk/ "40"22 /kori-n/ /xori-n/ /pata-ti/23
100 /nʲàmò/  ?/jom/ "big number, all" /dʒaʁu-n/24 /nʲamaː/ /muàmuà/
1000 /tʃỳmi/ /dymen/ or /tymen/ "10,000"25 /tʃɨ̀mɨ̀n/ /ti/

1 Manchu /soni/ "single, odd".
2 Old Bulgarian /tvi-rem/ "second".
3 Kitan has /tʃur/ "2" (Blažek 2006).
16 /ɖirkup/[citation needed] in Early Middle Korean(タリクニ/チリクヒ in 二中歴).
17 "Problematic" (Starostin et al. 2003:224).
18 Compare Goguryeo /tok/ "10" (Blažek 2006).
19 Manchu /dʒiri/, /dʒirun/ "a very big number".
21 "Hundred" in names of hundreds.
24 From */nʲam-ŋu-/.
25 Also see Tümen.
26 Modern Korean – needs further investigations

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Georg et al. 1999: 73-74
  2. ^ "Interactive Maps The Altaic Family from The Tower of Babel". Retrieved 18 June 2013. 
  3. ^ Georg et al. 1999: 81
  4. ^ Georg et al. 1999: 73-74
  6. ^ "Browse by Language Family". Ethnologue. Retrieved 18 June 2013. 
  7. ^ Poppe 1965: 125
  8. ^ Poppe 1965: 126
  9. ^ Poppe 1965: 127
  10. ^ Starostin et al. 2003: 8
  11. ^ Miller 1986: 34
  12. ^ Miller 1991: 298
  13. ^ Poppe 1965: 148
  14. ^ Poppe 1976: 470
  15. ^ Starostin et al. 2003: 8–9
  16. ^ Schönig 2003: 403
  17. ^ Starostin et al. 2003: 20
  18. ^ Starostin et al. 2003: 230-234
  19. ^ Miller 1991: 319–320
  20. ^ "Altaic etymological database". Retrieved 18 June 2013. 
  21. ^ "Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages (2003)". 1 January 2004. Retrieved 18 June 2013. 
  22. ^ "Response to Stefan Georg's review of the Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages". 1 January 2005. Retrieved 18 June 2013. 
  23. ^ "ingentaconnect Reply". 1 January 2005. Retrieved 18 June 2013. 
  24. ^ Georg 2005


Works cited[edit]

  • Aalto, Pentti. 1955. "On the Altaic initial *p-." Central Asiatic Journal 1, 9–16.
  • Anonymous. 2008. [title missing]. Bulletin of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, 31 March 2008, 264: ____.
  • Clauson, Gerard. 1956. "The case against the Altaic theory." Central Asiatic Journal 2, 181–187 [1]
  • Clauson, Gerard. 1959. "The case for the Altaic theory examined." Akten des vierundzwanzigsten internationalen Orientalisten-Kongresses, edited by H. Franke. Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, in Komission bei Franz Steiner Verlag.
  • Clauson, Gerard. 1968. "A lexicostatistical appraisal of the Altaic theory." Central Asiatic Journal 13: 1–23.
  • Dybo, Anna V. and Georgiy S. Starostin. 2008. "In defense of the comparative method, or the end of the Vovin controversy." Aspects of Comparative Linguistics 3, 109–258. Moscow: RSUH Publishers.
  • Georg, Stefan. 1999 / 2000. "Haupt und Glieder der altaischen Hypothese: die Körperteilbezeichnungen im Türkischen, Mongolischen und Tungusischen" ('Head and members of the Altaic hypothesis: The body-part designations in Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic'). Ural-altaische Jahrbücher, neue Folge B 16, 143–182.
  • Georg, Stefan. 2004. Review of Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages. Diachronica 21.2, 445–450.
  • Georg, Stefan. 2005. "Reply [to Starostin 2005]." Diachronica 22(2), 455–457.
  • Johanson, Lars. 2010. "The high and low spirits of Transeurasian language studies" in Johanson and Robbeets (2010), 7–20.
  • Johanson, Lars and Martine Robbeets (editors). 2010. Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective: Genealogy, Contact, Chance. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. (Includes contributions by Róna-Tas, Janhunen, Comrie, and others.)
  • Kuzmina, Elena E. edited by J. P. Mallory. 2007. The Origin of the Indo-Iranians. BRILL. ISBN 978-9004160-54-5
  • Lee, Ki-Moon and S. Robert Ramsey. 2011. A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Miller, Roy Andrew. 1980. Origins of the Japanese Language: Lectures in Japan during the Academic Year 1977–1978. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95766-2.
  • Miller, Roy Andrew. 1986. Nihongo: In Defence of Japanese. London: Athlone Press. ISBN 0-485-11251-5.
  • Miller, Roy Andrew. 1991. "Genetic connections among the Altaic languages." In Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell (editors), Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages, 1991, 293–327. ISBN 0-8047-1897-0.
  • Patrie, James. 1982. The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-0724-3.
  • Ramsey, S. Robert. 2004. Accent, Liquids, and the Search for a Common Origin for Korean and Japanese, 'Japanese Language and Literature Vol.38, No.2, Special Issue: In Honor of Samuel E. Martin', American Association of Teachers of Japanese.
  • Robbeets, Martine. 2004. "Swadesh 100 on Japanese, Korean and Altaic." Tokyo University Linguistic Papers, TULIP 23, 99–118.
  • Robbeets, Martine. 2005. Is Japanese related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic? Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
  • Robbeets, Martine. 2007. "How the actional suffix chain connects Japanese to Altaic." In Turkic Languages 11.1, 3–58.
  • Schönig, Claus. 2003. "Turko-Mongolic Relations." In The Mongolic Languages, edited by Juha Janhunen, 403–419. London: Routledge.
  • Tekin, Talat. 1994. "Altaic languages." In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 1, edited by R.E. Asher. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press.
  • Unger, J. Marshall. 1990. "Summary report of the Altaic panel." In Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology, edited by Philip Baldi, 479–482. Berlin – New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Vovin, Alexander. 1993. "About the phonetic value of the Middle Korean grapheme ." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56(2), 247–259.

Further reading[edit]

  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 1997. "Does Altaic exist?" In Irén Hegedus, Peter A. Michalove, and Alexis Manaster Ramer (editors), Indo-European, Nostratic and Beyond: A Festschrift for Vitaly V. Shevoroshkin, Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997, 88–93. (Reprinted in Joseph H. Greenberg, Genetic Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 325–330.)
  • Hahn, Reinhard F. 1994. LINGUIST List 5.908, 18 August 1994.
  • Johanson, Lars. 1999. "Cognates and copies in Altaic verb derivation." Language and Literature – Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages: Studies in Honour of Roy Andrew Miller on His 75th Birthday, edited by Karl H. Menges and Nelly Naumann, 1–13. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. (Also: HTML version.)
  • Johanson, Lars. 1999. "Attractiveness and relatedness: Notes on Turkic language contacts." Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Caucasian, Dravidian, and Turkic Linguistics, edited by Jeff Good and Alan C.L. Yu, 87–94. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
  • Johanson, Lars. 2002. Structural Factors in Turkic Language Contacts, translated by Vanessa Karam. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
  • Martin, Samuel E. 1966. "Lexical evidence relating Korean to Japanese." Language 12.2, 185–251.
  • Robbeets, Martine. 2004. "Belief or argument? The classification of the Japanese language." Eurasia Newsletter 8. Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University.
  • Sinor, Denis. 1990. Essays in Comparative Altaic Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. ISBN 0-933070-26-8.

External links[edit]