Editing Turan (section)

==== Linguistics ====
{{Main|Turanian languages}}

The term ''Turanian'', now obsolete, formerly{{When|date=June 2013}} occurred in the classifications used by European (especially [[Germany|German]], [[Hungary|Hungarian]], and [[Slovakia|Slovak]]) [[Ethnology|ethnologists]], [[Linguistics|linguists]], and [[Romanticism|Romantics]] to designate populations speaking non-[[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]], non-[[Semitic languages|Semitic]], and non-[[Hamites|Hamitic languages]]<ref>[[Abel Hovelacque]], ''The Science of Language: Linguistics, Philology, Etymology'', pg 144, [https://archive.org/details/sciencelanguage01hovegoog/page/n160 <!-- quote=neither aryan, nor hamitic, uralo or semitic. -->]</ref> and specially speakers of [[Altaic languages|Altaic]], [[Dravidian languages|Dravidian]], [[Uralic languages|Uralic]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]] and other languages.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Elisabeth |last1=Chevallier |first2=François |last2=Lenormant |title=A Manual of the Ancient History of the East |publisher=J. B. Lippincott & co. |date=1871 |pages=68 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zqQYvJBoLjwC&dq=turanian+dravidian&pg=PA68}}</ref>

[[Max Müller]] (1823–1900) identified different sub-branches within the Turanian language family:
* the Middle [[Altaic languages|Altaic]] division branch, comprising Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic.
* The Northern [[Uralic languages|Ural]] Samoyedic, Ugriche and Finnic.
* the Southern branch consisted of Dravidian languages such as Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and other Dravidian languages.
* the [[languages of the Caucasus]] which Müller classified as the ''scattered languages of the Turanian family''.

Müller also began to muse whether [[Chinese language|Chinese]] belonged to the Northern branch or Southern branch.<ref>{{cite book|first=George |last=van Driem |title=Handbuch Der Orientalistik |language=de |trans-title=Handbook of Oriental Studies |publisher=[[Brill Academic Publishers]] |date=2001 |pages=335–336 |isbn=9004120629 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fiavPYCz4dYC&dq=that+the+turanian+language+was+%27named+after+the+descendants+of+tur%27&pg=PA335}}</ref>

The main relationships between Dravidian, Uralic, and Altaic languages were considered [[Linguistic typology|typological]]. According to Crystal & Robins, "Language families, as conceived in the historical study of languages, should not be confused with the quite separate classifications of languages by reference to their sharing certain predominant features of grammatical structure."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Crystal |first1=David |last2=Robins |first2=Robert Henry |title=Language |at=5 – Linguistic change / Language typology |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/language/Linguistic-change#ref27199}}</ref>
{{As of | 2013}} linguists classify languages according to the method of [[comparative linguistics]] rather than using their typological features. According to ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Max's Müller's "efforts were most successful in the case of the Semites, whose affinities are easy to demonstrate, and probably least successful in the case of the Turanian peoples, whose early origins are hypothetical".<ref>"religions, classification of." ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.</ref> {{As of | 2014}} the scholarly community no longer uses the word ''Turanian'' to denote a classification of language families. The relationship between Uralic and Altaic, whose speakers were also designated as Turanian people in 19th-century European literature, remains uncertain.<ref>"Ural–Altaic languages." ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 2007</ref>