Altaic (/ælˈteɪᵻk/) is a proposed language family of central Eurasia, now widely seen as discredited. Various versions included the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic languages. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe. The group is named after the Altai Mountains, a mountain range in Central Asia. The language families included in the proposal share numerous characteristics. Supporters of Altaic, sometimes called "Altaicists", view the similarities as arising from common descent from a proto-Altaic language spoken several thousand years ago. Opponents maintain that the similarities are due to areal interaction between the language groups concerned. Some linguists think that the cases for either interpretation are equally strong; they have been called the "skeptics". Another view accepts Altaic as a valid family but includes in it 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 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 and Japanese. 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. (These are estimates, 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 or Old Japanese.)

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