We have a color for Altaic just as we have a color for other non genetic groups such as Papuan and American in order to keep the number of colors at a manageable level But most linguists have never been convinced of the validity of Altaic as a genetic group and the majority of linguistics simply view it as a Sprachbund I doubt that further research will reveal anything more convincing The notion of Altaic has been around for 60 something or more years and has failed to convince the majority of historical linguists in that time It s not like we re dealing with unknown languages and simply lack enough data Altaic is likely never to be demonstrated to be a valid genetic grouping