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The Alarodian family was first proposed by Fritz Hommel ( 1854– 1936). The term comes from the name that Herodotus used to refer to the kingdom of Urartu. The connection between the Northeast and North-central families was based on claimed similarities in phonetics and grammar, such as sentence structure and an ergative case system. The Hurro-Urartian languages were included on the basis of grammatical and lexical similarities. However the genetic relationships between these languages is not clear.
Further research on this group of languages was later published by K. Ostir (1921, 1922), A. Svanidze (1937), Giorgi Melikishvili (1965), I.M. Diakonoff and S.A. Starostin (1986).
There have been proposals to join the Alarodian language family with the Northwest Caucasian languages (which includes Abkhaz, Adyghe, Cherkess , and others) into the hypothetical North Caucasian familyNorth Caucasian languages is a blanket term for two distinct, but possibly related, phyla of languages spoken in the north Caucasus and in Turkey. The two phyla which make up the North Caucasian languages are: Northwest Caucasian languages Northeast Cauca; and then with the South Caucasian languagesThe South Caucasian languages also called Georgian or Kartvelian are spoken primarily in Georgia, with smaller groups of speakers in Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine and other countries. It includes the following languages: Georgian Kartuli : the ( GeorgianGeorgian (also Kartvelian Kartuli in Georgian) is the official language of Georgia, a republic in the Caucasus. For the origin of the name, see the Georgia article. Georgian is the primary language of 4,150,000 people in Georgia itself (90% of the populat, MegrelianThe Megrelian language Megruli ena in Georgian, Margaluri nina in Megrelian), sometimes called Mingrelian is a language spoken in northwest Georgia. Megrelian is estimated to have about 300,000-500,000 native speakers, mostly in the Mingrelia (Samegrelo), SvanThe Svan language Lushnu nin in Svan, Svanuri ena or in Georgian) is a language spoken in Northwest Georgia. Distribution Svan is the native language of about 30,000 people living in the mountains of Svaneti, i. in the districts of Mestia and Lentekhi of, and LazThe Laz language Lazuri in Laz, Chanuri in Georgian) is spoken by an ethnic group of the same name on the Southeast shore of the Black Sea. It is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 500,000 native speakers of Laz in Turkey (in a strip of land exte) into an Ibero-Caucasian language familyThe term Ibero-Caucasian (or Iberian-Caucasian was proposed by Georgian linguist Arnold Chikobava for the union of the four language families that are specific to the Caucasus area, namely South Caucasian, also called Georgian or Kartvelian; Northwest Cau. However, there is little linguistic evidence for these groupings.