Topic summary
Penobscot people
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Penobscot.
Language
Penobscot people historically spoke a dialect of Eastern Abenaki, an Algonquian language. It is very similar to the languages of the other members of the Wabanaki Confederacy. There are no fluent speakers and the last known Penobscot speaker of Eastern Abenaki, Madeline Tower Shay, died in the 1990s. A dictionary was compiled by Frank Siebert. The elementary school and the Boys and Girls Club on Indian Island are making an effort to reintroduce the language by teaching it to the children. The written Penobscot language was developed with a modified Roman alphabet; distinct characters have been developed to represent sounds that do not exist in the Roman alphabet.