Delaware language
| Delaware | |
|---|---|
| Native to | United States, in modern times Canada |
| Region | Around the lower Delaware and Hudson rivers in the United States; one or two Munsee speakers in Canada; Unami groups in Oklahoma |
|
Native speakers
|
7 or 8 speakers of Munsee (2009) Unami extinct |
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Algic
|
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 |
Individual codes: umu – Munsee unm – Unami |
| Glottolog | comm1246 |
The Delaware languages, also known as the Lenape languages, are Munsee and Unami, two closely related languages of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family. Munsee and Unami were spoken aboriginally by the Lenape people in the vicinity of the modern New York City area in the United States, including western Long Island, Manhattan Island, Staten Island, as well as adjacent areas on the mainland: southeastern New York State, eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and coastal Delaware.
Munsee are assigned to the Algonquian language family, and are analysed as members of Eastern Algonquian, a subgroup of Algonquian.
The languages of the Algonquian family constitute a group of historically related languages descended from a common source language, Proto-Algonquian. The Algonquian languages are spoken across Canada from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast; on the American Plains; south of the Great Lakes; and on the Atlantic coast. Many of the Algonquian languages are now extinct.
The Eastern Algonquian languages were spoken on the Atlantic coast from what are now called the Canadian Maritime provinces to North Carolina. Many of the languages are now extinct, and some are known only from very fragmentary records. Eastern Algonquian is considered a genetic subgroup within the Algonquian family, that is, the Eastern Algonquian languages share a sufficient number of common innovations to suggest that they descend from a common intermediate source, Proto-Eastern Algonquian. The latter proto-language The linguistic closeness of Munsee and Unami entails that they share an immediate common ancestor which may be called Common Delaware; the two languages have diverged in distinct ways from Common Delaware.
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Wikipedia