Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics.

Some linguists estimate the divergence of the Tungusic languages from a common ancestor spoken somewhere in Eastern Manchuria around 500 BC to 500 AD.

(Menges 1968, Khelimskii 1985)[7] While the general form of the protolanguage is clear from the similarities in the daughter languages, there is no consensus on detailed reconstructions.

[6] The Lake Khanka region was found to present the most likely homeland, based on linguistic and ancient genetic data.

[11] Other sources sharply criticize this as a random similarity in pronunciation with "Tungus" that has no real basis in fact.

[12] The historical records of the Korean kingdoms of Baekje and Silla note battles with the Mohe (Chinese: 靺鞨) in Manchuria during the 1st and 2nd centuries.

Liu et al. (2020) [14] revealed that Haplogroup C-F5484 and its subclades are the genetic markers of Tungusic-speaking peoples.

Currently, Manchu proper is a dying language spoken by a dozen or so elderly people in Qiqihar, China.

However, the closely related Xibe language spoken in Xinjiang, which historically was treated as a divergent dialect of Jurchen-Manchu, maintains the literary tradition of the script, and has around 30,000 speakers.

[citation needed] The earliest Western accounts of Tungusic languages came from the Dutch traveler Nicolaes Witsen, who published in the Dutch language a book, Noord en Oost Tartarye (literally 'North and East Tartary').

It described a variety of peoples in the Russian Far East and included some brief word lists for many languages.

The Tungusic languages are of an agglutinative morphological type, and some of them have complex case systems and elaborate patterns of tense and aspect marking.

[19] Below are Proto-Tungusic consonants as reconstructed by Tsintsius (1949) and the vowels according to Benzing (1955):[20] Tungusic is today considered a primary language family.