Altaic languages

Altaic, according to its proponents, is a language family that includes 66 languages spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia.

According to the best-known version 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 Ramstedt's Einführung in 1952-1957, most Altaicists have included Korean in Altaic. Since the publication of Miller's Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages in 1971, most have also included Japanese (Poppe 1976:470) or better Japonic, consisting of Japanese and Ryukyuan.

A few linguists associate 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".

The Macro-Altaic hypothesis is widely perceived as significantly more controversial than the Micro-Altaic one. However, among Altaicists it is actually the prevailing view (see List of Altaicists).

Not all linguists interested in the question accept the validity of the Altaic family. Those who accept it tend to refer to it as the "Altaic theory", those who reject it often prefer to speak of the "Altaic hypothesis" (Poppe 1965:3). The discussion, formerly civil and collegial, has become sharply polarized since the publication of Clauson's "The case against Altaic" in 1956 and Doerfer's critique of "the so-called Altaic languages" in 1963 (cf. Poppe 1965:152-154, Miller 1991:319).

The nature of the relationship among the languages proposed for Altaic has long been a matter of debate among linguists (Poppe 1965:130-154). Some scholars consider that the similarities among these languages indicate that they are genealogically related. Others maintain that they are not a language family (a group of languages descended from a common ancestor) but a Sprachbund (a group of languages that have become similar in some ways through massive borrowing as a result of prolonged language contact).

A number of linguists have moved from one position to the other in the course of their careers, most notably Ramstedt, originally inclined toward the borrowing explanation (Poppe 1965:130), and Vovin, originally a proponent of Altaic (e.g. 1994), now an opponent of it (2005).

Altaic is itself a major component of the Eurasiatic and Nostratic macrofamilies, which are in turn significantly more controversial than it.

History of the Altaic idea

The idea that the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are each others' closest relatives was allegedly first published in 1730 by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, a Swedish officer who travelled in the eastern Russian empire while a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War. However, as has been shown by Alexis Manaster Ramer and Paul Sidwell (1997), Strahlenberg actually opposed the idea of a closer relationship between the languages which later became known as "Altaic".

Poppe (1965:125) presents the following nuanced view:

However, von Strahlenberg's classification deserves mentioning as the first attempt at classification of a large number of languages some of which are Altaic.

The term "Altaic", as the name for a language family, was introduced in 1844 by Matthias Castrén, a pioneering Finnish philologist who made major contributions to the study of the Uralic languages. As originally formulated by Castrén, Altaic included not only Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus (=Tungusic) but also Finno-Ugric and Samoyed (Poppe 1965:126). Finno-Ugric and Samoyed are not included in later formulations of Altaic. They came to be grouped in a separate family, known as Uralic (though doubts long persisted about its validity). Castrén's Altaic is thus equivalent to what later came to be known as Ural-Altaic (ib. 127). More precisely, Ural-Altaic came to subgroup Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic as "Uralic" and Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic as "Altaic", with Korean sometimes added to Altaic, and less often Japanese.

For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, many linguists who studied Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic regarded them as members of a common Ural-Altaic family, together with Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic, based on such shared features as vowel harmony and agglutination. While the Ural-Altaic hypothesis can still be found in encyclopedias, atlases, and similar general reference works, it has not had any adherents in the linguistics community for decades. It has been characterized by Sergei Starostin as "an idea now completely discarded" (Starostin et al. 2003:8).

In 1857, the Austrian scholar Anton Boller suggested adding Japanese to Altaic or more precisely to Ural-Altaic (Miller 1986:34). For Korean, G.J. Ramstedt and E.D. Polivanov put forward additional etymologies in favor of its inclusion in the 1920s.

The culmination of decades of research and publication on the part of the author, Ramstedt's two-volume work Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft, 'Introduction to Altaic Linguistics', was published in 1952-1957. It rejected grouping the Uralic languages in a common family with the Altaic ones and included Korean in Altaic, an inclusion followed by most leading Altaicists to date. Ramstedt's first volume, Lautlehre ('Phonology'), contained the first comprehensive attempt to identify regular correspondences between the sound systems of the Altaic language families. The second volume dealt with Formenlehre ('Morphology'). (The second volume was actually published first, in 1952, with the first volume following in 1957.)

Ramstedt did not live to see the publication of his great work. He passed away in 1950, and the work was edited and seen through the press by Pentti Aalto, a student of his. In 1960, Nicholas Poppe presented what was in effect a heavily revised version of Ramstedt’s volume on phonology (Miller 1991:298) that has since set the standard in Altaic studies. Further contributions to Altaic linguistics in the 1960s were made by scholars such as Karl H. Menges and, on particular points, by Vladislav Illich-Svitych and others.

In the meantime, knowledge of the branches of Altaic and the individual languages of which they are composed made great strides, thanks in large part to the efforts of Vera Cincius (also spelled Tsintsius) on Tungusic (Poppe 1965:97-98) and of Poppe himself on Mongolic, with contributions by many other scholars.

Ramstedt and Cincius each had several students who carried on and extended their work (Poppe 1965:136, 98), as did Poppe.

Poppe (1965:148) considered the issue of the relationship of Korean to Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic was not settled. In his view, there were three real 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. Poppe leaned toward the third possibility (ib.), but did not commit himself to it in this work.

Roy Andrew Miller's 1971 book Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages convinced most Altaicists that Japanese also belonged to Altaic (Poppe 1976:470). Since then, the standard set of languages included in Altaic has comprised Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese (ib.).


A language family or a Sprachbund?

Even as Ramstedt's Einführung was making converts and generating the modern school of Altaic studies, a newly invigorated attack on the validity of the Altaic language family was taking shape. Gerard Clauson (1956), Gerhard Doerfer (1963), Alexander Shcherbak, and András Róna-Tas argued that the words and features shared by Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic were for the most part borrowings and that the rest could be attributed to chance resemblances. They argued that while there were words shared by Turkic and Mongolic, by Mongolic and Tungusic, and by all three, there were none shared by Turkic and Tungusic but not Mongolic. 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; on the other hand, we should expect exactly the observed pattern if borrowing is responsible. Furthermore, they argued that many of the typological features of the supposedly Altaic languages, such as agglutinative morphology and SOV word order, usually occur together in languages. In sum, the idea was that Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic form a Sprachbund – the result of convergence through intensive borrowing and long contact among speakers of languages that are not necessarily closely related. The proponents of this hypothesis are sometimes called "the Anti-Altaicists".


Since then, the debate has raged back and forth, with defenses of Altaic in the wide sense (e.g. Sergei Starostin 1991), advocacy of a family consisting of Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic but not Turkic or Mongolic ("Macro-Tungusic", J. Marshall Unger 1990), and wholesale rejections (e.g. Doerfer 1988) being published. The latter was generally the most popular point of view among historical linguists in the West, but hardly in the ex-USSR. (For a review see Georg et al. 1999.)

Starostin's (1991) lexicostatistical research showed that the 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%). Some of these probable cognates may look doubtful, but many of them appear to be quite stable and can hardly be the result of mutual borrowing. 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".

A further step in the debate was the publication of An Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages by Starostin, Anna V. Dybo, and Oleg A. Mudrak in 2003. The result of some twenty years of work, it contains 2800 proposed cognate sets, a complete set of regular sound correspondences, 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. Importantly, 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 (Starostin et al. 2003:20); all other combinations between the five branches also occur in the book.

Starostin's "sincere […] hope that this publication will bring an end to this discussion" (Starostin et al. 2003:7) has not been fulfilled, however. The debate continues unabated — e.g. S. Georg 2004, A. Vovin 2005, S. Georg 2005 (anti-Altaic); S. Starostin 2005, V. Blažek 2006, A. Dybo and G. Starostin 2008 (pro-Altaic).

Altaic: mainstream or marginal?

A further chapter in the Altaic controversy concerns attempts to define scholarly and public perception of the degree to which the Altaic position is standard or marginal. Leading Altaicists dismissed Clauson’s (1956) and to a lesser extent Doerfer’s (1963) critiques as superficial (e.g. Poppe 1965:152-156), while viewing the evidence in favor of the Altaic family as persuasive, though not as definitive as that for Indo-European (ib. 150). In contrast, Johanna Nichols reported in 1992 that the Altaic theory had been abandoned: "the received view now is that Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic are unrelated (see Unger 1990)" (Nichols 1992:4). This position was criticized by Alexis Manaster Ramer (LINGUIST List 5.911, 1994) on the ground that Unger’s paper was a short summary of a panel discussion on Altaic at which not a single Altaicist was present, nor any specialist on Turkic, Mongolic, or Tungusic, and that the key presentation ignored the extensive scholarly debate on the Altaic question since Doerfer’s critique in 1963. Unger himself later commented, "It is regrettable that Nichols read too much into Unger 1990, but such things happen." Nevertheless, the most widespread impression at the present time seems to be that the Altaic position is marginal, except perhaps in Russia. Manaster Ramer and others have vigorously defended the mainstream character of the Altaic position. It is hard to get reliable information as to which position is more widely held in the English-speaking and continental European academic worlds, and as usual no systematic survey exists. Without doubt there are well-known linguists on either side of the question. Specialists in the relevant languages and experts in language classification are likewise divided among themselves on the genealogical or areal character of the agreed-upon similarities.


The earliest known texts in an Altaic language are the Orkhon inscriptions, dating from the 8th century AD. They are written in a Turkic language. 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 prehistory of the Altaic-speaking peoples is largely unknown at the present time. Whereas for certain other linguistic groups, such as the speakers of Indo-European, Uralic, and Austronesian, we are able to frame substantial hypotheses, even if these are disputed, in the case of Altaic everything remains to be done. As Roy Andrew Miller (1991:319-320) describes the situation:

No one knows the earliest histories of the Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolian, and Proto-Tungus speakers—where they lived, how frequently they changed sites, or how often their paths crossed and recrossed. There are no early written records. There are no genuinely early histories.


  • Identification of archaeological cultures, comprised of 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.
  • Developing a family tree of languages and noting the relative distance of the splits that occur in it.
  • Observing evidence for contact between languages, which may indicate approximately when and where they were adjacent to each other.

All of these methods remain to be applied to the Altaic language group with the same degree of focus and intensity they have been applied to the Indo-European family (e.g. Mallory 1989, Anthony 2007).

In the absence of more extensive studies in this area, most claims about the prehistory of the Altaic-speaking peoples must be viewed as extremely preliminary. This includes the following remarks.

According to one line of reasoning, if the languages grouped as Altaic are genealogically related, their great differences from each other would point to a very ancient date for their proto-language, in the Mesolithic or even the Upper Paleolithic period. (Miller 1991 however emphasizes the commonalities of the Altaic languages in all major areas: phonology, vocabulary, inflections, and syntax.)

Proto-Altaic speakers might have entered Central Asia following the disappearance of the West Siberian Glacial Lake, which almost completely covered the flatlands of western Siberia up to the foothills of the Kuznetsk Alatau and Altai mountain ranges. With the Late Glacial warming, up to the Atlantic Phase of the Post-Glacial Optimum, Mesolithic groups moved north into this area from the Hissar (6000-4000 BCE) and Keltiminar (5500-3500 BCE) cultures. These groups brought with them the bow and arrow and the dog, elements of what Kent Flannery has called the "broad-spectrum revolution". The Keltiminar culture practised a mobile hunting, gathering, and fishing subsistence system. Over time, they adopted stockbreeding. The Keltiminar culture occupied the semi-desert and desert areas of the Karakum and Kyzyl Kum deserts and the deltas of the Amu Darya and Zeravshan rivers (Whitney Coolidge 2005).

Some seek the origin of Micro-Altaic in the spread of the Karasuk culture and the appearance of northern Mongol Dinlin elements. The Karasuk culture is the result of a migration of the eastern part of the Dinlins. Its influence extended as far as the Ordos region of China and across into Manchuria and northern Korea.

The Karasuk people lived in permanent settlements in frame-type houses. The economy was complex. They bred large-horned livestock, horses, and sheep. They developed a high level of bronze metallurgy. Characteristic of the Karasuk culture are extensive cemeteries. Tombs are fenced with stone slabs laid on crest.

Others equate the Karasuk culture with the origin of the Karasuk languages, a recently proposed language family that includes the Yeniseian languages and Burushaski but none of the suggested members of Altaic. Associating languages with archeological discoveries in the absence of written evidence is always a delicate matter. This hypothesis was dealt a major blow when the Yeniseian languages were firmly linked to the Na-Dené languages of North America in a family now called Dené-Yeniseian.

According to one view, Turkic and Mongolic are more closely related to each other than either is to Tungusic. If so, the split between Turkic and Mongolian would have been the last division within the Altaic group. It has been suggested that this occurred just prior to the Xiongnu period of Central Asian history. This would imply a considerably more shallow time depth for Proto-Altaic, or at least Proto-Micro-Altaic, than the late Stone Age. Such conflicts remain to be resolved.

The prehistory of Altaic is also important for the areal explanation of Altaic similarities, for it is important to determine the relative and absolute time depths at which borrowings could plausibly have taken place. In particular, borrowings that reflect the same sound system are unlikely to reflect a very great time depth.

List of Altaicists and critics of Altaic



Major critics of Altaic

Alternate hypotheses

  • Joseph Greenberg (2000-2002). Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic and Korean-Japanese-Ainu, grouped in Eurasiatic.
  • 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 of the Altaic languages

Reconstructed phonology

Based on the proposed correspondences listed below, the following phoneme inventory has been reconstructed for the 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/ /g/
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 ) or diphthongs (); 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 high or low pitch.

Sound correspondences

If a Proto(-Macro)-Altaic language really existed, it should be possible to reconstruct regular sound correspondences between that protolanguage and its descendants; such correspondences would make it possible to distinguish cognates from loanwords (in many cases). Such attempts have repeatedly been made. The latest and (so far) most successful version is reproduced here, taken from Blažek's (2006) summary of the newest Altaic etymological dictionary (Starostin et al. 2003) and transcribed into the IPA.




/pʰ/ /h/-²² /p/ /p/ /p/
/tʰ/ ³ 4 /t/ /t/ /t/
/kʰ/ /k/ /k/
/p/ /b/ /b/-6, /h/-², /b/ /p/ /p/
/t/ 4 7
/k/ 8 /k/
/b/ /b/ /b/
/d/ 4 /d/
/g/ /g/ /g/
/tʃ/ 4 /tʃ/
/dʒ/ /j/ /dʒ/ /dʒ/ /tʃ/
/ʃ/ /ʃ/ /s/ /s/
/z/ /j/ /s/ /s/ /s/ /s/
/n/ /n/ /n/ /n/ /n/
/nʲ/ /nʲ/ 14
/ŋ/ /ŋ/
/rʲ/ /rʲ/ /r/ /r/ /r/
/l/ /l/
/lʲ/ 4 /l/
/j/ /j/ /j/

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



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



á a a à² á
à a a a á à
áː 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

Because grammar is less easily borrowed than words, grammar is usually considered stronger evidence for language relationships than vocabulary. Starostin et al. (2003) have reconstructed the following correspondences between the case and number suffixes (or clitics) of the (Macro-)Altaic languages (taken from Blažek, 2006):

nominative: 0 0 0 0 0 0
partitive: /ga/ *-/ʁ/ (accusative) /ga/ /ga/ (possessive)
dative-locative: (locative-ablative) -/da/ (dative-locative), -/du/ (attributive) -/tu/ (attributive-locative)
dative-instrumental: -/nV/ (instrumental) /ni/ (dative-locative)
dative-directive: -/kʰV/ (dative) /kiː/ (directive)
comitative-locative: -/lV/ -/ro/ (instrumental-lative)
comitative-equative: -/tʃʰa/ (equative) /tʃa/ (ablative), (terminative) /to/ (comitative)
allative: -/gV/ (directive) * /giː/ (allative) -/ei/
directive: -/rV/ -/ru/ -/ro/ (lative)
instrumental-ablative: -/dʒV/ * terminal dative /dʒi/ /ju/ (ablative)
plural: -/tʰ/- *-/t/ -/d/ *-/tɨr/ *-/tati/
plural: -/l/- *-/lar/ *-/nar/ *-/ra/


Selected cognates

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns are seldom borrowed between languages. Therefore the many correspondences between Altaic pronouns found by Starostin et al. (2003) could be rather strong evidence for the existence of Proto-Altaic. The table below is taken (with slight modifications) from Blažek (2006) and transcribed into IPA.

"I" /ŋa/ * (oblique) /nà/
"thou" (nominative) /se/ */tʃi/ /si/ /-si//-sya/ /si/
"thee" (oblique cases) /sen/ ?*/tʃin/-
"thou" /ná/ -/ŋ/ */nè/ /ná/
"we" (nominative) /bà/ /bi-rʲ/ */ba/ /bue/ /ú-rí/ /bà/
"ye" (nominative) /s/ */ta/ /suː/


Numerals and related words


front /emo/ /øm-gen/ "upper part of breast" /emy/- /emu/~/ume/ "1" /upe/ "upper"
/mape/ "front"
single, one of a pair /sǿna/ /sɯŋar/ "one of a pair" /son-du-/ "odd" ¹ /hə̀nàh/ "1"
or /hə̀t-/
/sa/- "together, reciprocally"
2 /tybu/ ² /dʒiw-rin/~/dʒui-rin/ "2 (feminine)"³ /dʒube/ 4
pair, couple /pʰø̀kʰe/ /eki/ "2", /ekirʲ/ "twins"; ?/(j)ɛgir-mi/ "20" /(h)ekire/ "twins"
3 /ŋy/ /o-turʲ/ "30"5 /gu-rban/; /gu-tʃin/ "30" 6 /mi/-7
5 /tʰu/ /ta-bun/; /ta-bin/ "50"11 /tu-nʲga/ /tà/- /i-tu-/12
6 /nʲu/ /dʒi-rgu-/; /dʒi-ran/ "60"13 /nʲu-ŋu-/ 14 /mu/-
or /tarikuni/
8 /dʒa/ /dʒa-pkun/ /jè-t-/ 16 /da/-
9 /kʰegVnV/ /xegyn/ /kəkənə/
10 /tʃøbe/ or /tøbe/ /dʒuba-n/ /təwə/17,/-so/"-0"/i-so/50
many, a big number /dʒøːrʲo/ /jyːrʲ/ "100" 18 /jér(h)/ "10"
/jə̀rə̀/ many
/jə̀rə̀/- "10,000"
/pʰVbV/ /oː-n/ "10" /ha-rban/ "10", /ha-na/ "all" 19 -/pə/, -/pua/ "-00"20
20 /kʰyra/ "40"21 /kori-n/ /xori-n/ /pata-ti/22
100 /nʲàmò/ ?/jom/ "big number, all" /dʒaʁu-n/23 /nʲamaː/ /muàmuà/
1000 /tʃỳmi/ /dymen/ or /tymen/ "10,000"24 /tʃɨ̀mɨ̀n/ /ti/

  • ¹ Manchu /soni/ "single, odd".
  • ² Old Bulgarian /tvi-rem/ "second".
  • ³ Kitan has /tʃur/ "2" (Blažek 2006).
  • 6 Compare Silla /mir/ "3" (Blažek 2006).
  • 7 Compare Goguryeo /mir/ "3" (Blažek 2006).
  • 10 Kitan has /dur/ "4" (Blažek 2006).
  • 11 Kitan has /tau/ "5" (Blažek 2006).
  • 13 Kitan has /nir/ "6" (Blažek 2006).
  • 16 "Problematic" (Starostin et al. 2003:224).
  • 17 Compare Goguryeo /tok/ "10" (Blažek 2006).
  • 18 Manchu "a very big number".
  • 20 "Hundred" in names of hundreds.
  • 23 From */nʲam-ŋu-/.
  • 24 Also see Tümen.

Other cognates


star /pʰǿlʲo/ /jul-durʲ/ /ho-dun/ /osi/5 /pjɨːr/ /pə́tsí/
eye /næ̀ː/ /ni-dy/ /nʲia-sa/4 /nú-n/ /mà/-

  • 3 Compare Baekje */turak/ "stone" (Blažek 2006).
  • 4 This is disputed by Georg (2004), 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) mentions evidence from several Tungusic languages cited by Starostin et al. (2003). Georg (2005) does not accept this, referring to Georg (1999/2000) and an upcoming paper. By that time, Starostin was already dead (Starostin 2005 was published posthumously).
  • 5This is Jurchen language,it's usiha in modern Manchu.

References and notes


  • Aalto, Pentti. 1955. "On the Altaic initial *p-." Central Asiatic Journal 1, 9-16.
  • Clauson, Gerard. 1956. "The case against the Altaic theory." Central Asiatic Journal 2, 181-187.
  • 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 Korperteilbezeichnungen im Turkischen, Mongolischen und Tungusischen." Ural-altaische Jahrbucher, neue Folge B 16, 113-182.
  • Georg, Stefan. 2001. "Review of Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages." Diachronica 21.2, 115-150.
  • Georg, Stefan. 2005. "Reply [to Starostin 2005]." Diachronica 22.2, 455–457.
  • 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.)
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 1: Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Hahn, Reinhard F. 1994. LINGUIST List 5.908, 18 Aug 1994.
  • Martin, Samuel E. 1966. "Lexical evidence relating Korean to Japanese." Language 12.2, 185-251.
  • Miller, Roy Andrew. 1980. Origins of the Japanese Language: Lectures in Japan during the Academic Year 1977-78. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295957662.
  • Ramstedt, G.J. 1952. Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft II. Formenlehre, 'Introduction to Altaic Linguistics, Volume 2: Morphology', edited and published by Pentti Aalto. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
  • Ramstedt, G.J. 1957. Einführung in die altaische Sprachwissenschaft I. Lautlehre, 'Introduction to Altaic Linguistics, Volume 1: Phonology', edited and published by Pentti Aalto. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
  • 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 ᅀ." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56(2), 247–259.
  • 이기문, 국어사 개설, 탑출판사, 1991.

See also

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