Page "Altaic languages" Paragraph 5

The idea that the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are closely related to each other was allegedly first published in 1730 by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, a Swedish officer who traveled in the eastern Russian Empire while a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War.

However, as has been pointed out by Alexis Manaster Ramer and Paul Sidwell ( 1997 ), Strahlenberg actually opposed the idea of a closer relationship between the languages which later became known as " Altaic "..

Von Strahlenberg's classification was the first attempt at classification of a large number of languages some of which are Altaic.