| Massachusett | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wampanoag | ||||
| Spoken in | United States | |||
| Region | Southeast Massachusetts | |||
| Ethnicity | Wampanoag people, Massachusett people | |||
| Native speakers | ~5 children (no adults) Exinct late 19th century,[1] Revived 21st century[2] (date missing) |
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| Language family |
Algic
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | wam | |||
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The Massachusett language was a Native American language, a member of the Algonquian language family. It is also known as Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), Natick, and Pokanoket.
Massachusett was spoken by the Massachusett and the Wampanoag nations of Native Americans, who lived in the area of present-day Boston, on Cape Cod, and on the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts. Massachusett was one of the first Native American languages which English settlers learned, and the first Bible published in the colony was a translation in Massachusett, in 1663.
Massachusett is the first Native American language to be revived in the United States after its last speakers had died; the work has been led since 1993 by Jessie Little Doe Baird and the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project.
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The first Bible published in North America was a translation of the entire Bible into Massachusett; translated and printed in 1663 by John Eliot, a missionary associated with the Indian College at Harvard. He followed with a primer in 1669, and a second edition of the Bible in 1685.[3] Eliot's missionary work led to literacy among the Wampanoag, who left many wills, deeds, and other documents written in Massachusett using the orthography he introduced. As a result of the tradition of literacy, Massachusett has a much richer documentation than many other extinct Native American languages.
The Lord's Prayer in Massachusett:
Since 1993 Jessie Little Doe Baird, a Mashpee Wampanoag, has led the effort to revive the language within the Wampanoag nation more than a century after it was last spoken. She earned a Master's in Algonquian Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2000, and has compiled an 10,000-word dictionary, as well as developed a Wampanoag grammar (see below).[4]
This is the first time in the United States that a language has been revived after the death of all native speakers, and in 2010 Baird was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her leadership.[2] The work of the Wôpanâak (Wampanoag) Language Reclamation Project has been documented in the film, We Still Live Here - Âs Nutayuneân, by the filmmaker Anne Makepeace; it is being shown on PBS local stations at different dates during November 2011.[2]
The work has been a collaboration among members of The Assonet Band of Wampanoag, The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah and the Herring Pond Band of Wampanoag.[5] They are training adult facilitators to teach young children and develop a curriculum; the long-term goal is to establish a school in Wôpanâak.[4]
As reconstructed by Algonquianists, Massachusett had 11 consonants, two short vowels, and four long vowels. The consonants consisted of the stops /p/, /t/, /c/, /t͡ʃ/, and /k/; fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/; nasals /m/ and /n/; and semivowels /w/ and /j/. The short vowels were /a/ and /ə/, and the long vowels were /iː/, /uː/, /aː/, and /ãː/.[6]