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.

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~ 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 IndoEuropean 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:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L...

Music:
Please see my doc above for all song titles. So much credit to these talented creators:
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Jason Shaw (audionautix.com)