Piscataway language

Piscataway is an extinct Algonquian language formerly spoken by the Piscataway, a dominant chiefdom in southern Maryland on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay at time of contact with English settlers. ^[2] Piscataway, also known as Conoy (from the Iroquois ethnonym for the tribe), is considered a dialect of Nanticoke.^[3]

This designation is based on the scant evidence available for the Piscataway language. The Doeg tribe, then located in present-day Northern Virginia, are also thought to have spoken a form of the same language. These dialects were intermediate between the Native American groups of Lenape languages formerly spoken to the north of this area (in present-day Delaware and New Jersey) and the Powhatan language, formerly spoken to the south, in what is now Tidewater Virginia.

Notes

References

• OLAC resources in and about the Piscataway language
• A section of a catechism, probably in the Piscataway language, written by Andrew White, S.J.

Languages of Maryland Italics indicate extinct languages Indo-European English (Baltimore dialect, Tidewater dialect) Spanish French Italian German Indigenous languages Siouan (Tutelo, Saponi) Nanticoke Piscataway Susquehannock Powhatan Unami Other languages American Sign Language Chinese Korean