Piscataway language

Piscataway is an extinct Algonquian language formerly spoken by the Piscataway, a dominant chiefdom in southern Maryland on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay at time of contact with English settlers.^[2] Piscataway, also known as Conoy (from the Iroquois ethnonym for the tribe), is considered a dialect of Nanticoke.^[3]

This designation is based on the scant evidence available for the Piscataway language. The Doeg tribe, then located in present-day Northern Virginia, are also thought to have spoken a form of the same language. These dialects were intermediate between the Native American language Lenape spoken to the north of this area (in present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut) and the Powhatan language, formerly spoken to the south, in what is now Tidewater Virginia.