The Altaic languages consist of the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families, with some linguists including the Koreanic and Japonic families. These languages share agglutinative morphology, head-final word order and some vocabulary. The once-popular theory attributing these similarities to a common ancestry has long been rejected by most comparative linguists in favor of language contact, although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority. Like the Uralic language family, which is named after the Ural Mountains, the group is named after the Altai mountain range in the center of Asia. The core grouping of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic is sometimes called "Micro-Altaic", with the expanded group including Koreanic and Japonic labelled as "Macro-Altaic" or "Transeurasian".
The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum.
Ethnic groups in Chinese history refer to various or presumed ethnicities of significance to the history of China, gathered through the study of Classical Chinese literature, Chinese and non-Chinese literary sources and inscriptions, historical linguistics, and archaeological research.
Turkology is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and the Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative context. That includes ethnic groups from the Sakha, in eastern Siberia, to the Turks in the Balkans and the Gagauz, in Moldova.
Helmut Rix was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany.
Semitic studies, or Semitology, is the academic field dedicated to the studies of Semitic languages and literatures and the history of the Semitic-speaking peoples. A person may be called a Semiticist or a Semitist, both terms being equivalent.
John Richard Krueger was a professor at Indiana University, specialized in studies of Chuvash and Yakut, and Mongolian languages. His approximately 20 books are the standard works, each held in about one hundred United States research libraries. One of his most important contributions is that he translated numerous non-English sources and books into English, such as György Kara's Books of the Mongolian nomads : more than eight centuries of writing Mongolian.
Nicholas N. Poppe was an important Russian linguist. He is also known as Nikolaus Poppe, with his first name in its German form. He is often cited as N.N. Poppe in academic publications.
Pentti Aalto was a Finnish linguist who was the University of Helsinki Docent of Comparative Linguistics 1958–1980. Aalto was a student of G. J. Ramstedt. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1949 in Helsinki.
Nikolai Konstantinovich Dmitriev was Doctor of Philology, professor, an outstanding Orientalist-Turkologist, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, member of Russian Federation Academy of Sciences, Distinguished Scientist honoree of Turkmenia, Bashkiria, Chuvashia, and recognized member of the world Turkology.
Ralf-Stefan Georg is a German linguist. He is currently Professor at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany, for Altaic Linguistics and Culture Studies.
Gerhard Doerfer was a German Turkologist, Altaicist, and philologist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages, especially Khalaj.
Bernhard Gröschel was a German linguist and slavist.
Lars Johanson is a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Jean Kellens is a Belgian Iranologist who specialises in Avestan studies. From 1974 to 1980 he was the assistant of German Professor and Iranologist, Helmut Humbach at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. He also taught at the University of Liège until 1993 and then became a member of the Science Committee at the Collège de France.
Martine Irma Robbeets is a Belgian comparative linguist and japanologist. She is known for the Transeurasian languages hypothesis, which groups the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages together into a single language family.
Mehmet Talât Tekin was a Turkish linguist, Turkologist, researcher and writer who made important contributions to Turkology, the study of Old Turkic inscriptions, and Altaistics.
Edkhyam Rakhimovich Tenishev was a Soviet and Russian linguist who specialized in Turkic and Mongolic languages. He was a doctor of philology, a professor, and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He served as the head of the Department of Uralic and Altaic languages at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was editor-in-chief of the journal Советская тюркология(Soviet Turcology) ISSN 0131-677X and of the multi-volume publication Сравнительно-историческая грамматика тюркских языков .
Claus Schönig was a German Turkologist. His interests included the historical linguistics of the Turkic languages, Altaistics, and Turko-Mongolic relations.
Helmut Humbach was a German linguist and Iranist. He was a professor of Indo-European philology at University of Mainz. He is recognized particularly for his work on the Gathas of Zarathustra.
