MultiTree:

Name: Munsee Type: Language Alternate Names: Delaware; Ontario Delaware; Unami; Munsee Delaware Spoken in: Canada, USA Number of speakers: 7 (Kinkade 1991). Ethnic population: 400 (Kinkade 1991) (Ethnologue) Number of speakers: 10 (UNESCO) Number of speakers: 7 (World Oral Literature Project) Code: umu Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Families: Algic (Algonquian-Wiyot-Yurok, Algonquian-Ritwan) Parent Subgroup: Delaware; Delawaran (mdmb) Child Dialects: Wappinger (umu-wap) Munsee (umu-mun) Brief Description: "Munsee (Canadian Delaware) is an Eastern Algonquian language originally spoken from the area around Minisink Island in the upper Delaware River Valley to the middle Housatonic River in western Connecticut, including northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson River and the New York City metropolitan area, and western Long Island. At one time there were speakers of Munsee in a number of locations further west, the largest groups being on the Moraviantown, Caradoc (Munceytown), and Six Nations reserves in Canada. Other speakers ended up in eastern Kansas and among the Unami-speakers of Oklahoma, the Mahicans in Wisconsin, and the Senecas of western New York. A few speakers remain among the Delaware First Nation on the Moraviantown Reserve near Thamesville, Ontario, where most of the documentation of the language comes from. The divergent Wampano dialect on the Housatonic, attested by three hymn translations, had adopted some features from Mahican and the southern New England languages." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 19

Endangerment Status

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UNESCO Status: Critically endangered Ethnologue Status: Nearly Extinct Sutherland's Red List: Critically Endangered