Turanian is an obsolete language-family proposal subsuming most of the languages of Eurasia not included in

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...

and Chinese. During the 19th century, inspired by the establishment of the

family, scholars looked for similarly widespread families elsewhere. Building on the work of predecessors such as

Rasmus Rask Rasmus Kristian Rask (; born Rasmus Christian Nielsen Rasch; 22 November 1787 – 14 November 1832) was a Danish linguist and philologist. He wrote several grammars and worked on comparative phonology and morphology. Rask traveled extensively to ...

and

Matthias Castrén Matthias Alexander Castrén (2 December 1813 – 7 May 1852) was a Finnish Swedish ethnologist and philologist who was a pioneer in the study of the Uralic languages. He was an educator, author and linguist at the University of Helsinki. Castré ...

Max Müller Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of India ...

proposed the Turanian grouping primarily on the basis of the incidence of

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

morphology, naming it after

Turan Turan ( ae, Tūiriiānəm, pal, Tūrān; fa, توران, Turân, , "The Land of Tur") is a historical region in Central Asia. The term is of Iranian origin and may refer to a particular prehistoric human settlement, a historic geographical ...

, an ancient Persian term for the lands of Central Asia. The languages he included are now generally assigned to nine separate language families.

Classification

Müller viewed the structure of the family as follows: * Northern Division (

Ural-Altaic Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and former language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not shar ...

) **

Tungusic Tungusic may refer to: *The Tungusic languages *The Tungusic peoples, people who speak a Tungusic language {{dab ...

** Mongolic **

Turkic Turkic may refer to: * anything related to the country of Turkey * Turkic languages, a language family of at least thirty-five documented languages ** Turkic alphabets (disambiguation) ** Turkish language, the most widely spoken Turkic language * ...

** Samoyedic ** Finnic * Southern Division ** Taic ** Malaic (

Malayo-Polynesian The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeast ...

) ** Bhotîya (

Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spe ...

) *** Gangetic *** Lohitic ** Munda ** Tamulic ( Dravidian) He left

Japonic Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan, sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and ...

Koreanic Koreanic is a small language family consisting of the Korean and Jeju languages. The latter is often described as a dialect of Korean, but is distinct enough to be considered a separate language. Alexander Vovin suggests that the Yukjin dialect ...

, Koryak,

Itelmen The Itelmens ( Itelmen: Итәнмән, russian: Ительмены) are an indigenous ethnic group of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languag ...

and various

languages of the Caucasus The Caucasus, Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Comparative method, Li ...

unclassified, but suggested that they might have a common origin with Turanian. Linguists no longer consider typological features a sufficient criterion for the identification of language families. Müller's northern division, Ural-Altaic, was widely accepted for some time, but largely abandoned early in the 20th century. The combination of the Samoyedic and Finnic (Finno-Ugric) classes form the modern

Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...

family. The

Altaic Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are c ...

theory linking Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic is also rejected by most scholars. Each of the five classes of his southern division are now considered to belong to separate language families, Tai–Kadai,

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

and Dravidian respectively.

References

Works cited

* * * * {{Eurasian languages Proposed language families