Piscataway language

Piscataway is classified as an Eastern Algonquian language:

• Algic (42)
• Algonquian (40)
• Eastern Algonquian (12)
• Nanticoke-Conoy (2)
• Nanticoke [nnt]
• Piscataway [psy]

Piscataway is not spoken today, but records of the language still exist. According to The Languages of Native North America, Piscataway, otherwise called Conoy (from the Iroquois name for the tribe), was a dialect of Nanticoke. This assignment depends on the insufficient number of accessible documents of both Piscataway and Nanticoke. It is identified with the Lenape dialects (Unlachtigo, Unami, and Muncy; spoken in what is now called Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut), and is more closely connected to Powhatan, which was formerly spoken in the area of present-day Virginia. The first speakers lived on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, today part of Maryland. In particular, they occupied the range of the lower Potomac and Patuxent River seepages. "Potomac" is a Piscataway word ({{lang|psy|Patawomeck}}) that translates to "where the goods are brought".{{Cite journal |last=Bloom |first=John |year=2005 |title=Exhibition Review: The National Museum of the American Indian |url=https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/5837/ins.vSP.n1.327-338.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1 |journal=American Studies |publisher=Mid-America American Studies Association |volume=46 |issue=3/4 |pages=332 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150522092556/https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/5837/ins.vSP.n1.327-338.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1 |archive-date=2015-05-22 }}

The Jesuit evangelist Father Andrew White translated the Catholic catechism into the Piscataway language in 1610, and other English teachers gathered Piscataway language materials. The original copy is a five-page Roman Catholic instruction written in Piscataway; it is the main surviving record of the language.{{Cite web|url=http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:407325:5/component/escidoc:407324/piscataway_mackie2006_s.pdf|title=Fragments of Piscataway: A Preliminary Description|last=Mackie|first=Lisa|date=2006|access-date=February 12, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160804132441/http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:407325:5/component/escidoc:407324/piscataway_mackie2006_s.pdf|archive-date=August 4, 2016|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}} White also wrote a grammar dictionary,{{Cite web |last=Barmann |first=Ed |title=Key Figures Influenced Evangelization in the Americas |url=https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED370827.pdf#page=87 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150430034459/https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED370827.pdf |archive-date=2015-04-30 |access-date=2023-01-06 |publisher=Education Resources Information Center |page=76(90) |agency=Catholic News Service}} though it is now considered lost. A prominent speaker of Piscataway was Mary Kittamaquund, called the "Pocahontas of Maryland" due to her state as the daughter of a chieftain, marriage to an English settler and diplomatic ability.{{Cite journal |last=Watson |first=Kelly L. |date=2021 |title=Mary Kittamaquund Brent, "The Pocahontas of Maryland": Sex, Marriage, and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/780963/ |journal=Early American Studies |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=24–63 |doi=10.1353/eam.2021.0001 |s2cid=234311904 |url-access=subscription |access-date=2023-01-06 |via=Project MUSE}}

The National Museum of the American Indian Mitsitam Native Foods Café is named after the Piscataway and Delaware term for 'let's eat'.{{Cite book |last=William Neal |first=Skinner |url=https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/13823/Skinner%2C%20William.pdf?sequence=1 |title=All For One: Nation-Making And The National Museum Of The American Indian |publisher=Cornell University |year=2009 |location=Ithaca, New York |pages=36, 69 |language=en |format=PDF |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170817111516/https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/13823/Skinner%2C%20William.pdf?sequence=1 |archive-date=2017-08-17}} Similarly the University of Maryland, College Park named a dining hall Yahentamitsi, which translates to 'a place to go to eat'.{{Cite news |last=Lumpkin |first=Lauren |date=2021-11-01 |title=University of Maryland names dining hall Yahentamitsi, honoring Piscataway tribe |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/11/01/maryland-dining-hall-yahentamitsi-piscataway/ |access-date=2023-01-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211124065344/https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/11/01/maryland-dining-hall-yahentamitsi-piscataway/ |archive-date=2021-11-24 |issn=0190-8286}}

This section gives the phoneme inventory as reconstructed by Mackie (2006).

• A mid sound [{{IPA link|ə}}] may have also been present.

{{Reflist}}

• Mackie, Lisa (2006). [https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_407325/component/file_407324/content Fragments of Piscataway: A Preliminary Description].
• [http://www.language-archives.org/language/psy#other_resources1 OLAC resources in and about the Piscataway language]
• [http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/speccol/sc2200/sc2221/000017/000008/pdf/d005003a.pdf A section of a catechism, probably in the Piscataway language], written by Andrew White, S.J.
• [http://www.bigorrin.org/archive26.htm Nanticoke Language [archive]]
• [http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:407325:5/component/escidoc:407324/piscataway_mackie2006_s.pdf Fragments of Piscataway: A Preliminary Description]
• [http://www.native-languages.org/nanticoke_colors.htm Nanticoke Color Words]
• http://www.ethnologue.com/language/psy

{{Languages of Maryland}}

{{Native Americans in Maryland}}

Category:Eastern Algonquian languages

Category:Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands

Category:Extinct languages of North America

Category:Piscataway

Category:Indigenous languages of Maryland