Proto-Altaic

Altaic
(largely discredited)
Geographic distribution	North, Central, and West Asia, and Eastern Europe
Linguistic classification	Traditionally considered a major language family; now usually considered as a sprachbund
Subdivisions	Turkic Mongolic Tungusic Koreanic (occasionally included) Japonic (sometimes included) Ainu (rarely included)
ISO 639-2 / 5
Glottolog	None
Turkic languages   Mongolic languages   Tungusic languages   Koreanic languages   Japonic languages   Ainu language

Altaic (/ælˈteɪ.ᵻk/) is a proposed language family of central Eurasia and Siberia, now widely seen as discredited.

The Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic groups are invariably included in the family; some authors added Korean and Japonic languages. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from eastern Europe, through Central Asia to Anatolia and to the Korean Peninsula and Japanese archipelago in East Asia. The group is named after the Altai mountain range in Central Asia.

Another view includes only Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic. This view was widespread prior to the 1960s, but has almost no supporters among specialists today. The expanded grouping, including Korean and sometimes Japanese, came to be known as "Macro-Altaic", leading to the designation of the smaller grouping as "Micro-Altaic" by retronymy. Most proponents of Altaic continue to support the inclusion of Korean.

Micro-Altaic includes about 66 living languages, to which Macro-Altaic would add Korean, Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages, for a total of about 74. (Depending on what is considered a language and what is considered a dialect. They do not include earlier states of languages, such as Middle Mongol, Old Korean or Old Japanese.)