Nanticoke language
Nanticoke is an extinct Algonquian language formerly 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. 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