Ural-Altaic language

linguists propose the Ural-Altaic grouping, consisting of the Altaic languages (Turkish, Mongolian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tatar, Manchu, etc., plus perhaps Korean and Japanese) and the Uralic languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, etc.). This theory is debated, and since nowadays even the existence of the Altaic language family is highly controversial, the Ural-Altaic theory has faced some criticism among linguists.

This proposed language family is also known as Turanian. The term derives from the Persian word for places beyond the Oxus, Turān.

Both groups follow the principle of vowel harmony, are agglutinative (stringing suffixes, prefixes or both onto a single root) and lack grammatical gender (see noun case). However, this is not necessarily proof of genetic relationship, and the vocabularies of the two families do not correspond, except in the case of borrowings.