Turanian

[too-rey-nee-uhn, tyoo-]

adjective

1. belonging or pertaining to a group of Asian peoples or languages comprising nearly all of those that are neither Indo-European nor Semitic.

2. Ural-Altaic.

noun

1. a member of any of the peoples speaking a Turanian, especially a Ural-Altaic, language.

2. a member of any of the Ural-Altaic peoples.

Turanian

/ tjʊˈreɪnɪən /

noun

1. a member of any of the peoples inhabiting ancient Turkestan, or their descendants

2. another name for Ural-Altaic

adjective

1. of or relating to the Ural-Altaic languages or any of the peoples who speak them

2. of or relating to Turkestan or its people

Word History and Origins

Origin of Turanian¹

1770–80; < Persian Tūrān Turkestan + -ian

Example Sentences

The most learned of all these philologists argues that during the first or Rhematic period, there existed a tribe in Central Asia which spoke a monosyllabic language, in which lay the germs of the Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic forms of speech.

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The Huns, a people of Turanian stock, were closely related to the ancestors of the Magyars, or the modern Hungarians.

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Tales of soldiers and travelers, which doubtless grew as they were told, must have supplied both the poet and the historian with all that they knew regarding the strange Turanian invaders.

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Although for nearly a thousand years established in Europe and subjected to Aryan influences, the Magyar has yet retained its essential Ural-Altaic or Turanian features.

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Thus Darius subjugated the wild nations of the Pontic and Armenian mountains, and extended the Persian dominion to the Caucasus; for the same reasons he fought against the Sacae and other Turanian tribes.

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