Altaic languages

Altaic is suggested as a language family. It would include 66 languages that are spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia.

Distribution of the Altaic languages across Eurasia. The inclusion of Japanese and Korean, and to a lesser degree the existence of a single Altaic language family, is controversial.

According to the best-known classification of Altaic, it consists of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families. It is probably fair to say that this is the meaning attributed to "Altaic" by most general linguists.

However, since the publication of Gustaf John Ramstedt's Einführung in 1952–1957, most Altaicists have included Korean in Altaic. Since the publication of Roy Andrew Miller's Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages in 1971, most have also included Japanese (Nicholas Poppe) or better Japonic, consisting of Japanese and Ryukyuan.

A few linguists even count Ainu with the Altaic languages, but as part of a node including Korean and Japanese, in contradistinction to a Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic node, with Korean-Japanese-Ainu and Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic in turn forming a node at a higher level (e.g. Street 1962).

The core version of Altaic, consisting of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, is sometimes referred to as "Micro-Altaic" while the expanded version, including Korean or Korean and Japanese, is referred to as "Macro-Altaic".

Other websites

• Altaic family tree Ethnologue
• Altaic languages MSN Encarta
• Monumenta altaica Altaic linguistics website
• Altaic etymology section in StarLing databases
• Defense of Altaic by Alexis Manaster Ramer (1994)