Difference between revisions of "Altaic Languages"

Revision as of 06:40, July 23, 2007

The Altaic Languages are a group of languages comprising three subgroups:

This group of langauges is spoken in parts of the old Soviet Union, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, China and Mongolia.

The New American Desk Encyclopedia, Penguin Group, 1989.

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 * Turkish languages
-Altaic languages have often been considered distantly related to other notable language families. Until recently, the most popular theory was that these languages were related to [[Japanese]] and [[Ainu]]. However, those languages have now been shown to be isolates unrelated to any others. Altaic languages are most likely to be related to the Afro-Asiatic family. However, this relationship is very distant.
+This group of langauges is spoken in parts of the old Soviet Union, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, China and Mongolia.
-Altaic languages are characterized by agglutinative polysynthetic morphology. This is similar to many Native American languages. Phonologically, a widespread characteristic of Altaic languages is vowel harmony.
-This group of langauges is spoken in parts of the Soviet Union, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Korea and Mongolia.
 == Sources ==