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- The Massachusett dialects, as well as all the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) languages, could be dialects of a common SNEA language just as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible languages that essentially exist in a dialect continuum and three national standards. With the exception of Massachusett, which was adopted as the lingua franca of Christian Indian proselytes and survives in hundreds of manuscripts written by native speakers as well as several extensive missionary works and translations, most of the other SNEA languages are only known from fragmentary evidence, such as place names. Quinnipiac (Quiripey) is only attested in a rough translation of the Lord's Prayer and a bilingual catechism by the English missionary Abraham Pierson in 1658. Coweset is only attested in a handful of lexical items that bear clear dialectal variation after thorough linguistic review of Roger Williams' A Key into the Language of America and place names, but most of the languages are only known from local place names and passing mention of the Native peoples in local historical documents. Within what is usually regarded as Massachusett, there were certainly dialects as it was spoken by several different peoples across a broad region, and widely adopted as a second language over most of New England and Long Island. The use of the dialect of the Massachusett—specifically the speech of the Praying town of Natick, with some Nipmuc influences—in the Bible led to it assuming the role of a de facto standard and prestige variant, especially in regards to writing. The spoken language was also highly influenced by the speech of Natick since a large number of the Indian missionaries, teachers and clerks included many men from prestigious, chiefly families from or with kinship connections there or had spent several years there in training before going on to serve other Indian communities. The Indians adopted literacy with the orthography of Eliot's Bible, and even began to adjust their speech, leading to dialect leveling across the region. By 1722, only fifty-nine years after the publication Eliot's Bible translation, Experience Mayhew remarked on the leveling effects on Martha's Vineyard, where the local speech was quite distinct, '... most of the little differences betwixt them have been happily Lost, and our Indians Speak, but especially write much as the Natick do. Some vestiges of dialects continued even with leveling, and Martha's Vineyard islanders continued to use variant forms such as ohkuh instead of ohke (ahkee) /ahkiː/ 'earth' or 'land,' and ummenaweankanut, 'in his posterity,' instead of uppommetuwonkkanit (upumeetyuwôkanut) /əpəmiːtʲəwãkanət/ Occasional variation in spelling seems to indicate some dialectal interference. Syncopation, relatively rare in Natick speech, was a spreading feature and seems to have been an obligatory feature of late-stage SNEA languages, possibly an influence from the Abenakian languages. Thus, kuts, 'cormorant,' and ꝏsqheonk, 'his blood,' but more generally these words are found as non-syncopated kuttis (kutuhs) /kətəhs/ and wusqueheonk (wusqeeheôk) /wəskʷiːhiːjᵊãk/, respectively, that appeared in the Bible. Nevertheless, most of the surviving manuscripts and documents that do demonstrate dialectal variation are often of uncertain geographical and ethnic origin. Daniel Gookin, who had traveled with John Eliot on his missions, brought the Indians under the jurisdiction of the colonial government and was responsible for bringing the Indians under English laws and governance. He noted that the Pawtucket, Massachusett and Pokanoket (Wampanoag) all spoke the same language, and may have considered the separate peoples to have spoken distinct dialects. Ives Goddard proposed the dialects of Natick, North Shore (Pawtucket), Wampanoag, Nauset and Coweset, produced somewhat similarly below, and is mostly grouped according to the various peoples known in history that are believed to have spoken the language. (en)
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- The Massachusett dialects, as well as all the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) languages, could be dialects of a common SNEA language just as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible languages that essentially exist in a dialect continuum and three national standards. With the exception of Massachusett, which was adopted as the lingua franca of Christian Indian proselytes and survives in hundreds of manuscripts written by native speakers as well as several extensive missionary works and translations, most of the other SNEA languages are only known from fragmentary evidence, such as place names. Quinnipiac (Quiripey) is only attested in a rough translation of the Lord's Prayer and a bilingual catechism by the English missionary Abraham Pierson in 1658. Coweset is only a (en)
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