Delaware | |
---|---|
Lënapei èlixsuwakàn | |
Geographic distribution | United States, in modern times Canada Around the lower Delaware and Hudson rivers in the United States; one or two Munsee speakers in Canada; Unami groups in Oklahoma |
Native speakers | 2 speakers of Munsee (2018) Unami spoken as a second language by Native Americans of the Delaware Tribe of Indians |
Linguistic classification | Algic |
Subdivisions | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 / 5 | del |
ISO 639-3 | del – inclusive codeIndividual codes: umu unm |
Glottolog | comm1246 |
The Delaware languages, also known as the Lenape languages (Delaware: Lënapei èlixsuwakàn),[3] are Munsee and Unami, two closely related languages of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family. Munsee and Unami were spoken aboriginally by the Lenape people in the vicinity of the modern New York City area in the United States, including western Long Island, Manhattan Island, Staten Island, as well as adjacent areas on the mainland: southeastern New York State, eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware.[4]