| Quiripi | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | United States |
| Native speakers | extinct (date missing) |
| Language family |
Algic
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | qyp |
Quiripi (pronounced /ˈkwɪrɪˌpiː/,[1] also known as Quiripi-Unquachog, Quiripi-Naugatuck, and Wampano) was an Algonquian language formerly spoken by the indigenous people of southwestern Connecticut and central Long Island,[2][3] including the Quinnipiac, Naugatuck, Unquachog, Mattabesic, Potatuck, Weantinock, and Paugussett. It has been effectively extinct since the end of the 18th century,[4] although Frank T. Siebert, Jr., was able to record a few Unquachog words from an elderly woman in 1932.[5]
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Quiripi belonged to the Eastern Algonquian branch of the Algonquian language family.[6][7] It shared a number of linguistic features with the other Algonquian languages of southern New England, such as Massachusett and Mohegan-Pequot, including the shifting of Proto-Eastern Algonquian */aː/ and */eː/ to /ãː/ and /aː/, respectively, and the palatalization of earlier */k/ before certain front vowels.[8][9] There appear to have been two major dialects of Quiripi: an "insular" dialect spoken on Long Island by the Unquachog and a "mainland" dialect spoken by the other groups in Connecticut, principally the Quinnipiac.[10][11]
Quiripi is very poorly attested,[12] though some sources do exist. One of the earliest Quiripi vocabularies was a 67-page bilingual catechism compiled in 1658 by Rev. Abraham Pierson, during his ministry at Branford, Connecticut,[13][2] which remains the chief source of modern conclusions about Quiripi.[3] Unfortunately, the catechism was "poorly translated" by Pierson,[3] containing an "unidiomatic, non-Algonquian sentence structure."[14] It also displays signs of dialect mixture.[15] Other sources of information on the language include a vocabulary collected by Rev. Ezra Stiles in the late 1700s[16] and a 202-word Unquachog vocabulary recorded by Thomas Jefferson in 1791,[5] though the Jefferson vocabulary also shows clear signs of dialect mixture and "external influences."[17] Additionally, three early hymns written circa 1740 at the Moravian Shekomeko mission near Kent, Connecticut, have been translated by Carl Masthay.[18]
Linguist Blair Rudes attempted to reconstitute the phonology of Quiripi, using the extant documentation, comparison with related Algonquian languages, as "reconstructing forward" from Proto-Algonquian.[19] In Rudes' analysis, Quiripi contained the following consonant phonemes:[20]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | t | tʃ | k | |
| Fricative | s | (ʃ)* | h | ||
| Nasal | m | n | |||
| Rhotic | r | ||||
| Semivowel | w | j |
| ^ /ʃ/ was a distinct phoneme only in the mainland dialect; in Unquachog it had merged with /s/ |
Quiripi's vowel system as reconstituted by Rudes was similar to that of the other Southern New England Algonquian languages. It consisted of two short vowels /a/ and /ə/, and four long vowels /aː/, /iː/, /uː/, and /ʌ̃/.[20]