Quiripi (pronounced , also known as Mattabesic, Quiripi-Unquachog, Quiripi-Naugatuck, and Wampano) was an Algonquian language formerly spoken by the indigenous people of southwestern Connecticut and central

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...

,Rudes (1997:1)Goddard (1978:72) including the

Quinnipiac The Quinnipiac were a historical Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. They lived in present-day New Haven County, Connecticut, along the Quinnipiac River. Their primary village, also called Quinnipiac, was where New Haven, Connect ...

, Unquachog, Mattabessett (Wangunk),

Podunk The terms ''podunk'' and ''Podunk Hollow'' in American English denote or describe an insignificant, out-of-the-way, or even completely fictitious town.Nick Bacon. "Podunk After Pratt: Place and Placelessness in East Hartford, CT." In ''Confront ...

Tunxis The Tunxis were a group of Quiripi speaking Connecticut Native Americans that is known to history mainly through their interactions with English settlers in New England. Broadly speaking, their location makes them one of the Eastern Algonquia ...

, and

Paugussett The Golden Hill Paugussett is a State recognized tribes, state-recognized Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe in Connecticut. Granted reservations in a number of towns in the 17th century, their land base was whittled away ...

(subgroups Naugatuck, Potatuck,

Weantinock Wawyachtonoc (also rendered Wyachtonok, Wawayachtonoc, and Wyaghtonok) were an Algonquian-speaking Native American people indigenous to east central New York and northwest Connecticut. In 1687, the Wyachtonok, originally subgroup of Paugussett, ...

). It has been effectively

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

since the end of the 19th century, although Frank T. Siebert, Jr., was able to record a few Unquachog words from an elderly woman in 1932.Rudes (1997:5)

Affiliation and dialects

Quiripi is considered to have been a member of the

Eastern Algonquian The Eastern Algonquian languages constitute a subgroup of the Algonquian languages. Prior to European contact, Eastern Algonquian consisted of at least 17 languages, whose speakers collectively occupied the Atlantic coast of North America and adj ...

branch of the Algonquian language family. It shared a number of linguistic features with the other Algonquian languages of southern New England, such as

Massachusett The Massachusett are a Native American tribe from the region in and around present-day Greater Boston in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name comes from the Massachusett language term for "At the Great Hill," referring to the Blue Hills ...

and Mohegan-Pequot, including the shifting of Proto-Eastern Algonquian * and * to and , respectively, and the palatalization of earlier * before certain

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

s.Rudes (1997:27) There appear to have been two major dialects of Quiripi: an "insular" dialect spoken on Long Island by the Unquachog and a "mainland" dialect spoken by the other groups in Connecticut, principally the Quinnipiac.

Attestation

Quiripi is very poorly attested, though some sources do exist. One of the earliest Quiripi vocabularies was a 67-page bilingual

catechism A catechism (; from , "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of Catholic theology, doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adult co ...

compiled in 1658 by

Abraham Pierson, the elder Abraham Pierson, the elder (1611–1678) was an English Nonconformist clergyman, known as a Congregational minister in New England. He reportedly came to the American colonies in 1639 to escape persecution for his Puritan views. Later, he and ot ...

, during his ministry at

Branford, Connecticut Branford is a shoreline New England town, town located on Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, about east of downtown New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven. The town is part of the South Central Connecticut Planning Regi ...

, which remains the chief source of modern conclusions about Quiripi. Unfortunately, the catechism was "poorly translated" by Pierson, containing an "unidiomatic, non-Algonquian sentence structure." It also displays signs of dialect mixture. Other sources of information on the language include a vocabulary collected by the Rev.

Ezra Stiles Ezra Stiles ( – May 12, 1795) was an American educator, academic, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He is noted as the seventh president of Yale College (1778–1795) and one of the founders of Brown University. According ...

in the late 1700s and a 202-word Unquachog vocabulary recorded by

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...

in 1791, though the Jefferson vocabulary also shows clear signs of dialect mixture and "external influences." Additionally, three early hymns written circa 1740 at the Moravian Shekomeko mission near

Kent, Connecticut Kent is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. Located alongside the border with New York (state), New York, the town's population was 3,019 according to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The town is part of the Northwe ...

, have been translated by Carl Masthay.

Phonology

Linguist

Blair Rudes Blair Arnold Rudes (May 18, 1951 – March 16, 2008) was an American linguist and professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte best known for his expertise in Native American languages. He was hired in 2004 to reconstruct the long ...

attempted to reconstitute the phonology of Quiripi, using the extant documentation, comparison with related Algonquian languages, as "reconstructing forward" from

Proto-Algonquian Proto-Algonquian (commonly abbreviated PA) is the proto-language from which the various Algonquian languages are descended. It is generally estimated to have been spoken around 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, but there is less agreement on where it was ...

. In Rudes' analysis, Quiripi contained the following consonant

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

s:Rudes (2007:18) Quiripi's vowel system as reconstituted by Rudes was similar to that of the other Southern New England Algonquian languages. It consisted of two short vowels and , and four long vowels , , , and .

Orthography

* a – * â – * ch – * h – * i – * k – * m – * n – * o – * ô – * p – * r – * s – * sh – * t – * u – * w – * y – Omniglot

References

Bibliography

* (2007). "The Dialectology of Southern New England Algonquian." In ''Papers of the 38th Algonquian Conference'', ed. H. C. Wolfart. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, pp. 81–127 * (1978). "Eastern Algonquian Languages." In ''Northeast'', ed. Bruce G. Trigger. Vol. 15 of ''Handbook of North American Indians'', ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 70–77 * (1999). ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
"Quiripi (Quinnipiac, Unquachog, Wampano, Naugatuck, Mattabesic)."
Native American Language Net

Omniglot * (1980). ''Some Helps for the Indians 1658 Bilingual Catechism'', reprinted in "Language and Lore of the Long Island Indians," ''Readings in Long Island Archaeology and Ethnohistory'', Vol. IV. Stony Brook, NY: Suffolk County Archaeological Association * (1997). "Resurrecting Wampano (Quiripi) from the Dead: Phonological Preliminaries." ''Anthropological Linguistics'' (39)1:1–59 * (1978). "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island: Early Period." In ''Northeast'', ed. Bruce G. Trigger. Vol. 15 of ''Handbook of North American Indians'', ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 160–176

External links

OLAC resources in and about the Quiripi language

{{Algonquian languages Eastern Algonquian languages Languages of the United States Extinct languages of North America Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands Languages extinct in the 1900s Paugussett