TURA'NIAN LANGUAGES. In opposition to _bran, the name of their own country, the Persians from the earliest times called the countries lying to the n. of it Turan, and this name is still frequently used as synonymous with Turkistan. The term Turanian derived from it has been adopted by philologists, in contrast with Aryan (q.v.), to desig nate a family of languages comprising " all languages spoken in Asia and Europe (in Oceania), and not included under the Aryan and Semitic families, with the exception of Chinese and its cognate dialects." The languages of this family are of the agglutinate order (see Puthououv). Max Muller classes them in two great divisions, the northern and the southern. The northern•division falls into five sections—the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Finnic, and Samoyedic. Of these, the Tungusic dialects, which extend n. and w. from China, are the lowest in organization, being, some of them, nearly as destitute of grammatical forms as the Chinese. The Mongolic dialects are superior to the Tungusic, although the-different parts of speech are hardly distinguished; both branches, however, are believed to be manifesting symptoms of grammatical develop ment. The Turkic dialects, of which the Osmanli or Turkish of Constantinople is the most prominent, occupy an immense area, extending from the Lena and the Polar sea to the Adriatic. They are extremely rich in grammatical forms, especially in the conju gation of the verb. The most important members of the Finnic class are the Finnic of the Baltic coasts (see Figs), and the Hungarian language, or Magyar (see HuNoAny). These dialects have also a fully developed grammatical structure, and in point of declen sion are even richer than the Turkic.
The southern division comprises, among others, the 7amulic or Dravidian dialects of southern India (see TAMIL); the Gangetic group, divided into two branches, the trans Himalayan (Thibetan, q.v.)and sub-Himalayan (Bhotanese, etc.); the Tait, or the dialects
of Siam; and the JIalaic, or Malay and Polynesian dialects. The Turanian languages do not present the same unmistakable family likeness, the same clear evidences of gene alogical relationship, as are presented by the Aryan and Semitic groups. The nature of their structure, and the nomadic character of the peoples speaking them, are sufficient to account for their exceeding diversity, even supposing them to have all sprung from the same original stock. "'the only characteristic Turanian feature which always re mains is this: the root is never obscured. Besides this, the determining or modifying syllables are generally placed at the end, and the vowels do not become so absolutely fixed fQr each syllable as in Sanskrit and Hebrew. On the contrary, there is what is called the law of harmony, according to which the vowels of each word may be changed and modulated so as to harmonize with the key-note struck by its chief vowel. The Towels in Turkish, for instance, are divided into two classes, sharp and flat. If a verb contains a sharp vowel in its radical portion, the vowels of the terminations are all sharp; while the same terminations, if following a root with a flat vowel, modulate their own vowels into the fiat key. Thus we have sev-mek, to love, but bak-male., to regard, mek or /mak, being the termination of the infinitive. Thus, we say, so-ler, the houses, but at-lar the horses, ler or lar being the termination of the plural."—Max Mhller's Science of Lan guage, 1st series.