21 Facts About Massachusett language

Massachusett language is an Algonquian language of the Algic language family, formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts.

The Massachusett language is known as Natick or Wopanaak, and historically as Pokanoket, Indian or Nonantum.

Dialects of the language were formerly spoken by several peoples of southern New England, including all the coastal and insular areas of eastern Massachusetts, as well as southeastern New Hampshire, the southernmost tip of Maine and eastern Rhode Island, and it was a common second or third language across most of New England and portions of Long Island.

Revitalization of the Massachusett language began in 1993 when Jessie Little Doe Baird began the Wopanaak Language Reclamation Project .

The Massachusett language people continue to inhabit the area around Boston and other Wampanoag tribes are found throughout Cape Cod and Rhode Island.

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Similarly, Asnacomet Pond, in a formerly Nipmuc-Massachusett language area, was recorded as 'Asacancomic in the older colonial sources.

The people and Massachusett language take their name from the sacred hill, known in English as Great Blue Hill.

In more technical contexts, Massachusett is often known by names referring to its pan-ethnic usage, such as Massachusett-Wampanoag, Wampanoag-Massachusett, Massachusett-Coweset or Massachusett-Narragansett, although the majority of linguists consider Narragansett a separate albeit closely related language.

Until the end of the seventeenth century, Massachusett was a locally important language.

The epidemics opened the Massachusett language speaking peoples to attacks from regional rivals, such as the Narragansett and Pennacook and traditional enemies such as the Tarratine and Mohawk, as well as removed any resistance to colonial expansion.

Small differences can be ascertained from the written sources, but most records indicate that the Massachusett language-speaking people spoke very similarly to each other.

Migrations, cultural influences and Massachusett language shift led to the displacement by speaker of the Kalapuyan, Na-Dene, Palaihnihan, Plateau Penutian, Salishan, etc.

Eliot himself relied on Cockenoe, his servant from Long Island who spoke a related SNEA Massachusett language and was able to interpret for Eliot; Job Nesutan, who was very proficient in writing and reading; John Sassamon, an orphan raised in the households of English settlers and later became an important interpreter between the settlers and Native Americans, and James Wawaus Printer, who learned the printing presses and was said by Eliot to have been the most prolific.

Use of the written Massachusett language declined over the course of the eighteenth century.

The last document to survive in the Massachusett language are the records of the Congregational Church of Gay Head, recording the marriage of John Joel and Mary Tallmon by the minister Zachary Hossueit, in 1771.

The last known epigraphic evidence of the written Massachusett language is its use on the now damaged tombstone of Silas Paul, another Native American minister of Gay Head, in 1787.

The Massachusett language survived on Nantucket until the death of the widow Dorcas Honorable in 1855.

The Native Americans maintained their libraries of religious manuscripts and personal records even as the language ceased to be spoken, many of which were later sold to private collectors and ultimately are now in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Anthropologist and Eastern Woodlands Culture expert Frank Speck visited the Wampanoag of Mashpee and tried to document the Massachusett language, but was able to list only twenty words, acquiring them with great difficulty from five of the oldest members in the community.

Massachusett language shared several features in common with other Algonquian languages.

Many of the translations in the Massachusett language were of a religious nature, as the missionaries were hoping to win over converts by using the 'Indian language.