Altaic: Rise and Fall of a Linguistic Hypothesis

Languages throughout Asia are startlingly similar, but are they all part of one huge family? Thus began the biggest fight in the history of historical linguistics.

~ Briefly ~

Starting with my little quiz, see how languages from Turkey to Northern China have "embarrassing" parallels. Some linguists explained these similarities by linking the languages together into one large family. They called the family "Altaic", with a core containing Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. Capitalizing on connections between Korean and Japanese, Altaic proponents added these two apparent isolates to form an even larger "macro" family. The result was a sweeping hypothesis: all Turkic, Tungusic, Mongolic, Koreanic and Japonic languages are genetically related.

The idea at first seemed to take off, with Moscow at the helm of the research. However, linguists increasingly criticized results and the methods used by Altaicists. They were skeptical that the languages were convergent and shallowly similar rather than divergent and truly related. One notable supporter turned into its most vocal critic. We'll drop in on the spat between him and three foremost Altaicists to uncover the controversy and the controversy over the controversy.

We'll leave with a sense of how Altaic fell from linguistic grace, along with some of the main reasons why. While there are people who do Altaic, linguists tend to give me the impression that consensus is strongly on the side of areal explanations for the features we saw in my quiz (like the Mesoamerican Sprachbund) instead of genetic affiliation (like Indo-European or Austronesian).

Thank you for watching! This isn't about taking sides, but appreciating the story.

~ Credits ~

Art, narration, animation and some of the music by Josh from NativLang

Turkish captions by Ümit Duran

Sources for claims and credits for music, fonts, sfx:

Music:
Please see my doc above for all song titles. So much credit to these talented creators:

[yanamed]

I went to a finnish language course once with all participants only being able to speak indogermanic languages beforehand besides one who spoke turkish. Everytime we learned some new grammer he said 'Oh, thats so cool, thats just like in turkish'. Needless to say it was completly new for everyone else. Was great fun ;)

[christosvoskresye]

Even biologists trying to reconstruct the "tree of life" have realized the tree metaphor is a dangerous oversimplification. We STILL have lateral gene transfer between distantly related species today, and once it enters the germ line and becomes inherited, these genes make the idea of a simple family tree ultimately meaningless. In the distant past, when eukaryotes were first emerging, the situation was even more complicated.


If that's true in genetics, it's true in spades in linguistics. This is not a case of "my tree good, your tree bad." ALL trees are potentially dangerous oversimplifications.

[NativLang]

I got more in character, swapping between what each side was saying. Spending so much time on color-coded quotes was a change. For me, this was more about sharing the story than about asking you to weigh in on a conflict. Are there other tales would you'd like to see animated like this?

[weilongguan]

I'm a Manchu from Beijing, I speak a little Manchu and a little Mongol, when I learned Turkish in Istanbul I found the grammar and vocab surprisingly matching (excluding Islamic borrowings in Turkish and Tibetan Buddhist borrowings in Manchu/Mongol). All those suffixes and conjugations are nearly the same.
Other than that my grandpa (Manchu) and grandma (Mongolian) could communicate with each other speaking their native languages (plus Chinese and Tibetan)

[Jerimbo]

LANGFOCUS AND NATIVLANG VIDEOS IN ONE DAY OH THE LORD HAS BLESSED US, IMMEDIATELY CLICKED

Last time I was this early, altaic was still an accepted proposal

[Xidnaf]

I was always curious about this myself, one of the oldest ideas for a video on my list. Awesome to see it presented so well here! :D

[mailasun]

Turns out I’m one of the rare people who still knows Manchu.
ᠮᡠᠰᡝᡳ ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ ᠪᡝ ᠪᠠᡳᠨᡩᡠᡥᡝ ᠠᠮᠪᡠᠯᠠ ᠪᠠᠨᡳᡥᠠ᠉

[alice_atari]

I think the failure of the Altaic hypothesis actually opens up some interesting questions about how languages form. I suspect when we understand creolization better we will see that it is a fundamental part of the formation of new languages.

[quaternarytetrad]

So today I learned how to provoke a language nerds

[tontonj]

as a native kazakh, learning english and russian was very difficult and the languages didn’t make sense to me most of the time, I didn’t notice anything related to mine or if I did it was russian words borrowed from turkic
NOW, when I started learning freaking KOREAN where I least expected that much similarities. Not only grammatical structures which was crazy but also phonetic pronunciations of vowels and consistency. In a year I was able to understand basic speech and now even though stopped learning I can understand what they basically mean when watching a content in korean, it’s fascinating. and mind you I spent four to five years to be somewhat fluent in english. similarities really show when you’re a native speaking and learning one of these languages, It’s easy bc they’re very similar

[KenKeenan]

Altaic: is there any more controversial linguistic theory than me?
Nostratic: hold my beer

[eyuin]

To me Altaic is more of a cultural region rather than a related family. Kind of similar to languages in Mesoamerica.

[VTPPGLVR]

I had an absolutely horrible day. This cloud of a particularly harsh panic attack hung over me, making existing difficult. I saw your video in my feed, and hearing a simple sorta-silly “Ever heard language nerds fight? Well you will!” actually made me smile.
Thank you for reminding me that this crap today isn’t all my life and that there are nice things I can still access.

[zanderrose]

I’ve been told by people from Turkey that the Altaic hypothesis is still taught as fact there, even in university level linguistics courses

[ooo_Kim_Chi_ooo]

Living in Kyrgyzstan as an American and my family being Turkic as well ive been able to come into contact with Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Altai, Uyghur, and a few others and they have such incredible similarities and differences.

[aaronmarks]

Altaic is so popular that it's even popped up in the Americas: during my MA program, I found a grammar of the Aymara language (spoken in Bolivia and Peru), in which the author, a native speaker, claimed dead on that Aymara is an Altaic language. He even claimed that the Aymaras are descended from Asian Altaic speakers that crossed from Asia to South America *by ship* sometime in the last few millennia. I guess to be fair, Aymara fits that pattern shown at the beginning pretty well, just that it doesn't have vowel harmony, and doesn't have pronouns in b- and s-.

[nurmakhanzholshybek]

I am Kazakh and I am very glad that my language was mentioned in this video

[Sophia-bmpb]

As a Korean, Japanese, Turkish and Mongolian learner, I would say that although their grammar structures are very similar, but Turkish grammar is much more difficult than the others.

[oliverduolingo]

Going to take notes on this video! This theory of Mongolian, Turkish, and Manchu being one super-family fascinates me and I want to better understand it! Thanks for making a video on it and releasing it! You're my favourite language/linguistics youtuber! :D

[slamalamadingdangdongdiggy]

For anyone wondering, the Turkic runes read "Tengri", which is an old word for God.