* 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. 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 old Soviet Union, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Korea China and Mongolia.
== Sources ==