Altaic languages

Altaic languages, group of languages consisting of three language families—Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus—that show noteworthy similarities in vocabulary, morphological and syntactic structure, and certain phonological features. Some, but not all, scholars of those languages argue for their genetic relationship based on putative systematic sound correspondences, while the consensus among general linguists is that this hypothesis is at best speculative and by no means proven. The group contains more than 50 languages, spoken by more than...