Nanticoke language

Nanticoke is an extinct Algonquian language spoken in Delaware and Maryland, United States. The same language was spoken by several neighboring tribes, including the Nanticoke, which constituted the paramount chiefdom; the Choptank, the Assateague, and probably also the Piscataway and the Doeg. The last native speaker died in 1856; in the 21st century, an effort has been made to revive the language.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
Affricate		Template:IPAlink
Fricative		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
Nasal	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Approximant	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPAlink Template:IPAlink
Mid	Template:IPAlink Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink Template:IPAlink
Open		Template:IPAlink Template:IPAlink

• Allophones of are heard as .
• Template:IPAslink may have an allophone of in word-final positions.

Vocabulary

Nanticoke is sometimes considered a dialect of the Delaware language, but its vocabulary was quite distinct. This is shown in a few brief glossaries, which are all that survive of the language. One is a 146-word list compiled by Moravian missionary John Heckewelder in 1785, from his interview with a Nanticoke chief then living in Canada. The other is a list of 300 words obtained in 1792 by William Vans Murray, then a US Representative (at the behest of Thomas Jefferson.) He compiled the list from a Nanticoke speaker in Dorchester County, Maryland, part of the historic homeland.

Nanticoke vocabulary

These words are some of the listings in Murray's glossary. In the letter that accompanied his glossary, Murray noted that the Nanticoke were "not more than nine in number," and also stated that "they have no word for the personals 'he' and 'she.'" The exclamation point (!) indicates a "peculiar, forcible, explosive, enunciation" of a syllable in this phoneticization.

Selected words from W.V. Murray's glossary

Nanticoke	English
	Arm
	Black
	Blue
	Brave
	Cowardly
	To eat
	Eye
	Green
	Leg
	Moon
	Red
	To run
	To sleep
	Sun
	White
	Yellow

Modern Nanticoke

With the assistance of a native speaker, Myrelene Ranville née Henderson of the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba, Canada, who speaks a similar language, Anishinaabemowin, a group of Nanticoke people in Millsboro, Delaware, assembled to revive the language in 2007, using the vocabulary list of Thomas Jefferson. It had been "more than 150 years since the last conversation in Nanticoke took place." Similar efforts made by the Nanticoke Indian Association are also being taken through partnership with local linguists. In 2023, a book for the revitalization of the Nanticoke language was published.

See also

• Piscataway language

External links

• Custom lexicon: The Interactive ALR – includes all known Nanticoke data
• Native Languages of the Americas: Nanticoke (Southern Delaware)
• Nanticoke Language [archive]
• OLAC resources in and about the Nanticoke language