Term no longer in
polite use by
linguists. Many believe in an
Altaic family, comprising
Turkish,
Mongolian, and others, but all would object strenuously to "
simple structure", and what Webster's meant by "
low grade" is anyone's guess.
The term Turanian is occasionally met with on the outer fringes of historical linguistics for a wide-ranging proto-family covering Altaic and all sorts of other things: Semitic, Dravidian, anything mysterious that they can make wild connections to.