Nanticoke is an extinct Algonquian language formerly spoken in
Delaware and Maryland, United States. The same language was
spoken by several neighboring tribes, including the Nanticoke,
which constituted the paramount chiefdom; the Choptank, the
Assateague, and probably also the Piscataway and the Doeg.
Nanticoke is sometimes considered a dialect of the Delaware
language, but its vocabulary was quite distinct. This is shown
in a few brief glossaries, which are all that survive of the
language. One is a 146-word list compiled by Moravian missionary
John Heckewelder in 1785, from his interview with a Nanticoke
chief then living in Canada. The other is a list of 300 words
obtained in 1792 by William Vans Murray, then a US
Representative (at the behest of Thomas Jefferson.) He compiled
the list from a Nanticoke speaker in Dorchester County,
Maryland, part of the historic homeland. Modern Nanticoke  With
the assistance of a native speaker of a similar language,
Anishnabay, a group of Nanticoke people in Millsboro,