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but most of the languages are only known from local place names and passing mention of the Native peoples in local historical documents.Costa, D. J. (2007). pp. 82-85.
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.Goddard, I. (2000). 'The Use of Pidgins and Jargons on the East Coast of North America' in Gray, E. G. and Fiering, N. (eds.) The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800: A Collection of Essays. (pp. 61-80). 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.Connole, D. A. (2007). pp. 101-104. 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.Cotton, J. (1830). Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. John Davis (ed.) Vol II(3). pp. 242-243. Cambridge, MA: E. W. Metcalf Company.Mandell, D. R. (1996). Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts. (p. 59). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Some vestiges of dialects continued even with leveling, and Martha's Vineyard islanders continued to use variant forms such as instead of () Fermino, J. L. D. (2000). p. 59. 'earth' or 'land,' and , 'in his posterity,' instead of () Baird, J. L. D. (c. 1993). Wôpanâak-language Dictionary. Sample entry for pumeetyuwôk(an), with third-person prefix (-[w]u) and locative suffix (-ut).Goddard, I., & Bragdon, K. (1988). p. 19. 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, , 'cormorant,' and , 'his blood,' but more generally these words are found as non-syncopated () Costa, D. J. (2007). p. 97. From PA *kentehsiwa. and () , respectively, that appeared in the Bible.Costa, D. J. 2007. pp. 96-99. 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.Goddard, I. (1990). 'Unhistorical features of massachusett.' J. Fisiak (Ed.), Historical Linguistics and Philology: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TILSM] (Vol. 46, pp. 227–244). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter
Massachusett
The dialect specific to the Massachusett people was likely a prestigious dialect. Elderly converts in Natick informed Eliot and Gookin that the Massachusett leaders were able to exert political influence and exact tribute over most of the other Massachusett-speaking peoples and all the tribes as far west as the Pioneer Valley, such as the Nipmuc, Nashaway and Pocomtuc, before weakened by epidemics that greatly reduced the population, warfare with enemy tribes and competition with English settlers.Bragdon, K. J. (2005). The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Northeast. (pp. 133-135). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. As a practical feature, the Massachusett were centrally located between other Massachusett speakers, thus it was understood over a broader region of the dialect continuum.
The dialect was likely the basis of Massachusett Pidgin, adopted as a regional language of commerce and intertribal communication over most of New England and Long Island. The Natick variety was used by Eliot as the basis of the written language used in his translations of the Bible and other works, thus making it an unofficial standard language of writing, and also prestigious variety because of the pronounced role of Natick and its people in the mission to the Indians. The influence caused significant dialect leveling as speakers adjusted their speech, thus the Natick variety greatly influenced dialects enough to erase many of the differences.
From place name and document evidence, Massachusett seems to prefer the locative suffix -et/-it/-ut over the older form form that generally appears elsewhere, and many place names were 'standardized' to Massachusett spellings and norms across the region. Although the latter form still appears in Massachusett written sources of Natick until a late period, in place names, it is not found in traditional Massachusett or Narragansett place names and had varying mixtures of usage elsewhere. The dialect of the Massachusett also seems to have resisted syncope, which is obligatory in many late-stage SNEA languages, which may have been prevented in Massachusett due to fossilization as a written language.
Massachusett people historically ranged over much of the Greater Boston region, lining the shores of Boston Harbor and extending west towards the fall line, corresponding roughly to the 128 beltway, and much of the South Shore almost as far south as Plymouth. They were later confined to the Praying towns of Natick and Ponkapoag, in Natick and Canton, and Titicut and Mattakeesett, corresponding to Bridgewater and Pembroke, Massachusetts.
As the Massachusett were mainly confined to the Praying towns and adjusted to the written language, it is uncertain if there was any internal diversity. Natick was originally settled by Massachusett people from Nonantum, later joined by the Nipmuc that lived west of Natick. Although the community remained a Massachusett-speaking one, it is quite possible that Nipmuc influenced it to some extent. Titicut and Mattakeesett were near Wampanoag areas, and many of the Praying Indians in those communities were close to and had kinship relations with Wampanoag just to the south. The language survived until the 1740s when the Indians were reduced to colonial wards under appointed guardians and large portions of the town were either sold or rented to English settlers. Only one speaker could be found in 1798, and the language likely went extinct in the dawning years of the nineteenth century.Goddard, I., & Bragdon, K. (1988). (185 ed., p. 20). Although no speakers remain today, the two state-recognized Massachusett tribes of Natick and of Ponkapoag continue to use the language in its colonial orthography for cultural, sacred and liturgical purposes.SachemsquawNaticksqw, C. H. (1999). 'Our History.' Retrieved February 20, 2016.'American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2010.' (2013). (2010 Census CPH-T-6). Table 1. American Indian and Alaska Native Population by Tribe for the United States: 2010. The Ponkapoag are erroneously listed as Wampanoag in the census.Reinert, B. (2011, November 17). Natick observes American Indian Heritage Month. The Official Homepage of the United States Army. Retrieved February 20, 2016. Both of these tribes have state recognition under the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs.Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, Commission on Indian Affairs. (n.d.). Tuition waiver guidelines. Retrieved from Commonwealth of Massachusetts website: www.mass.gov/hed/docs/dhcd/ia/tuitionwaiver.doc.
The written language survives in the records of Natick until 1721, when administrative control of the town passed into the hands of English settlers. In addition, it is essentially the language of all of Eliot's translations of the Bible and several other religious works by other Christian missionaries and some personal letters from Natick.
Wampanoag (Pokanoket)
The Wampanoag language () , spoken by Wampanoag people also called Pokanoket, had historical variation due to the insular regions. The Wampanoag mainly lived in southeastern Massachusetts, with more historical communities on Cape Cod, the Elizabeth Islands, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. Wampanoag also historically inhabited much of southeastern Rhode Island. The name of the people refers to the "east" or "dawn," from Massachusett () . Contemporary speakers of the Massachusett language speak a revived Wampanoag dialect of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project.
The isolation of islanders from the mainland led to dialectal diversity. John Cotton Sr. (1639–1699), a missionary from Martha's Vineyard, told his son, a missionary to the Wampanoag just south of Plymouth, on the mainland, the following to describe mutual intelligibility:
I can't tell or don't know, only this I know, that these Indians don't understand every word of them Indians.'John Cotton (1830), pp. 242–43.