ON "URAL-ALTAIC" LANGUAGES THEORY
Languages and linguistics is a subject that has fascinated me, since I was a small kid. When I was young, I liked to listen to the sound of other languages and I thought it could be connected to music. As a music lover, I wished I could find a job that would combine both language and music. I had even written an article at our school newspaper at High School, about the connection of language and music. Because I seriously believe that both the sound of a language is its music and the language, which a song is sung in, plays a major role in the whole song.
Something that made me seriously consider my studying linguistics, was the fact that I had always loved to search about the great language families. What I had realised was that most historical-comparative linguists deal with the Indo-European language families. And I asked myself: "Why not study the rest of them?". Well, this question of mine was one of the reasons why I started learning Finnish, but that's a completely different topic. We have got a family friend, who comes from Finland, and I can remember my mum telling me that Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish belong to a great family, called Ural-Altaic family. And I grew up knowing that those 3 languages were genetically* related.
However, when I came to study linguistics, I indeed noticed that at Greek University, professors used to teach us about the Ural-altaic language family. And soon I realised that this hypothesis is created by a Greek linguist, which I strongly disagree on many language topics with. What I noticed was that nowhere in foreign (for Greece) bibliography do linguists refer to an Ural-altaic language family. Instead, they divide Finnish, Estonian, Saami and Hungarian into the category of Finno-Ugric languages, and Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Kazakh into the Turkic languages. I have never seen anywhere the term "Ural-Altaic" family.
Thus I suppose this has to be a theory, which was supported in previous decades. Afterward I realised this fact, I searched a bit more of this theory and found out that even Wikipedia (although it's not the most reliable website in the world) is sceptical about this theory: Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a long time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages.[9][10][11] However, there has not been sufficient evidence to conclude the existence of either of these macrofamilies, the shared characteristics between the languages being attributed presently to extensive prehistoric language contact.
What I would like to show in this article is that I'm really sceptical towards blending Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages in a greater language family with a common ancestor. However, I don't deny that it could be a fact. It's only that I think we don't have enough evidence, in order to put them into one. But who knows? In the future, maybe we might have a clearer view on those languages, as at present time most linguists deal mostly with the Indo-European language family.
*Not in biological terms, of course, as those countries are too far from each other. Genetically related means that they have a common ancestor, which would be the hypothetical Proto-Ural-altaic language; the same happens with Proto-Indoeuropean language, which linguists try to reconstruct.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages
Something that made me seriously consider my studying linguistics, was the fact that I had always loved to search about the great language families. What I had realised was that most historical-comparative linguists deal with the Indo-European language families. And I asked myself: "Why not study the rest of them?". Well, this question of mine was one of the reasons why I started learning Finnish, but that's a completely different topic. We have got a family friend, who comes from Finland, and I can remember my mum telling me that Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish belong to a great family, called Ural-Altaic family. And I grew up knowing that those 3 languages were genetically* related.
However, when I came to study linguistics, I indeed noticed that at Greek University, professors used to teach us about the Ural-altaic language family. And soon I realised that this hypothesis is created by a Greek linguist, which I strongly disagree on many language topics with. What I noticed was that nowhere in foreign (for Greece) bibliography do linguists refer to an Ural-altaic language family. Instead, they divide Finnish, Estonian, Saami and Hungarian into the category of Finno-Ugric languages, and Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Kazakh into the Turkic languages. I have never seen anywhere the term "Ural-Altaic" family.
Thus I suppose this has to be a theory, which was supported in previous decades. Afterward I realised this fact, I searched a bit more of this theory and found out that even Wikipedia (although it's not the most reliable website in the world) is sceptical about this theory: Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a long time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages.[9][10][11] However, there has not been sufficient evidence to conclude the existence of either of these macrofamilies, the shared characteristics between the languages being attributed presently to extensive prehistoric language contact.
What I would like to show in this article is that I'm really sceptical towards blending Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages in a greater language family with a common ancestor. However, I don't deny that it could be a fact. It's only that I think we don't have enough evidence, in order to put them into one. But who knows? In the future, maybe we might have a clearer view on those languages, as at present time most linguists deal mostly with the Indo-European language family.
*Not in biological terms, of course, as those countries are too far from each other. Genetically related means that they have a common ancestor, which would be the hypothetical Proto-Ural-altaic language; the same happens with Proto-Indoeuropean language, which linguists try to reconstruct.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages
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