MultiTree:

Name: Mahican Type: Language Alternate Name: Mohegan Once Spoken in: USA Code: mjy Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Families: Algic (Algonquian-Wiyot-Yurok, Algonquian-Ritwan) Parent Subgroup: Mahican (mhcn) Child Dialects: Moravian (mjy-mor) Stockbridge (mjy-sto) Brief Description: "Mahican was an Eastern Algonquian language spoken in the upper Hudson River Valley from Lake Champlain south to Greene County, and in the upper Housatonic Valley in Massachusetts. It shared features with its southern neighbour Munsee and with the Southern New England languages to the east. In the eighteenth century it was the dominant language at the mission village of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There is a fair amount of documentation, principally by Moravian and English missionaries, and there are translations of religious texts by literate native speakers. Some dialectal diversity is attested. Many Mahicans joined various groups of Delawares and their descendants switched to speaking Munsee or Unami. A remnant in upstate New York was removed in the nineteenth century to Wisconsin, where the language was last spoken in the 1930s, and where some fieldwork was done with the last speakers and semi-speakers." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 17

Endangerment Status

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Linguist List Status: Extinct Ethnologue Status: Extinct Sutherland's Red List: Not listed