Altaic Languages - History of The Altaic Idea

History of The Altaic Idea

The idea that the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are closely related to each other was allegedly first published in 1730 by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, a Swedish officer who traveled in the eastern Russian Empire while a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War. However, as has been pointed out by Alexis Manaster Ramer and Paul Sidwell (1997), Strahlenberg actually opposed the idea of a closer relationship between the languages which later became known as "Altaic".. Von Strahlenberg's classification was the first attempt at classification of a large number of languages some of which are Altaic.

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