The phonology is based regular sound changes that took place in the development of Proto-Eastern Algonquian from Proto-Algonquian, as well as cues in the colonial orthography regarding pronunciation, as the writing system was based on English pronunciation and spelling conventions in use at the time, keeping in mind differences in late seventeenth century English versus today.
It was historically spoken by the Massachusett people of Greater Boston, the Pawtucket of southernmost Maine, coastal New Hampshire and the lower Merrimack River watershed, the Wampanoag of southeastern Massachusetts but specifically Cape Cod and the Islands and portions of Rhode Island, the Nauset (possibly a Wampanoag sub-group) of the outer Cape and the Coweset of north-western Rhode Island, and likely spread as a common second language to many Nipmuc and Pennacook speaking groups.
In a simplified Pidgin form, it was a common medium of intertribal communication across most of New England and Long Island.
Since the Bible and most of the missionary translations were based on the dialect of the Massachusett people, specifically its Natick variety, that form gained prestige.
[4] The sequence /aːj/ is prevalent in inanimate intransitive verbs that translate as 'it is X', and in the colonial orthography it had unitary spellings like ⟨i⟩, e.g. PA *wapyawi > PEA *wa·pe·yɘw > PSNEA *wąpa·yɘw > Massachusett wompi (wôpay) /wãpaːj/, ('it is white.
[6] Just as /oː/, represented in Algonquian linguistics as ⟨*o·⟩, shifted to /uː/, a similar process occurred in English just a few generations before Eliot's time during the Great Vowel Shift, and both book and mood would have rhymed with the current pronunciations of poke and mode; even in the Early Modern English of Eliot's time, mood and book shared the same vowel.
[7] Eliot and the other colonial missionaries often switched between the unvoiced-voiced pairs, and it is possible that the consonants themselves had allophones dependent on word position and dialect.
[13] As a result of borrowings, English-language religious, technical, agricultural, legal, societal, cultural, and governmental terminology was adopted by the Indians.
Foreign sounds, or recognition of the preferred allophone, led to the adoption of /b/, /d/, /f/, /ɡ/, /dʒ/, /ʒ/, /θ/, /ð/ and /ŋ/ as phonemes in these English loanwords.
Thus, 'Thursday' and as well as its alternate Early Modern English form Yurſday existed along the lesser-used Massachusett coinage nappanatashikquinishonk (nôpanatahshuquneehshôk) /nãpanatahʃəkʷəniːhʃãk/, which can be translated as 'that which goes five days long' (after the [original] Sabbath).
[16] Few consonant clusters, especially in relation to Proto-Eastern Algonquian and Proto-Algonquian, are permitted in the Massachusett language; however, syncopation, i.e., deletion of /a/, /ə/ or /iː/ when they fall in weak or weaker stress positions in a word, increased the number of possible clusters in the rare Massachusett dialects that employed it.
For example, annum (anum, 'dog,') but annúmmwag (anumwak, /anəmwak/, 'dogs')[17] Also, additional morphemes attached to the root word often begin with consonants themselves, thus increasing their likelihood at these junctures.
[18][19] In the rare dialects that permitted syncopation, combinations such as /kskʷ/, /ths/, /skʷ/, /ks/, /kʷs/, /skʷh/ and /mʃ/ have been recorded in the literature, although some examples from translations of the Book of Psalms that were intended to be sung were forcibly altered to fit the meter of the music.
Primary stress generally falls on either the rightmost (iambic) or leftmost (trochaic) syllables, but there are numerous exceptions.
Long vowels and short syllables in the strong part of the foot receive secondary stress.
[25] Unique to Southern New England Algonquian, the same processes that trigger vowel affection also bring about palatization.
[41][42] From an unknown Algic ancestor, Proto-Algonquian emerged sometime around 1000 BC, posited to have been spoken anywhere from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains of Montana or an area just west of the Great Lakes.
The Algonquian languages spread, covering southern Canada and the northern half of the United States from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.
Around 1000 AD, Proto-Eastern Algonquian emerged, probably somewhere in southern Ontario about the Great Lakes region, and spread from the Maritimes to the Carolinas and separated by speakers of Iroquoian languages.
The timeline for the development of PSNEA is unclear, but it might be linked to the local adoption of corn, beans and squash agriculture slowly introduced from the south.
When Massachusett emerged as a spoken language is unclear, but by the 1400s, cultural practices and peoples would probably be recognizable to the Pilgrims and Puritans that encountered their descendants two centuries later.
Proto-Algonquian *Cθ generally yields *Cx, save PA *nθ which develops into PEA *hr.
Under normal development, *nl would yield PEA *hr, but it morphs into *h in transitive inanimate singular imperatives.
For instance, PSNEA *arəm ('dog') was Massachusett anum, Narragansett ayimp, Nipmuc alum, and Quiripi arum.
Although this appears to be diagnostic of the SNEA languages, the intrusive nasal is possibly a feature shared with Algonquian.
When not in the initial syllable of a word, and probably in an unstressed position often shortened to PSNEA *ə, a process that may also trigger vowel affection and /k/ palatization.
This is reflected by the double-o ligature ⟨ꝏ⟩ or the digraph ⟨oo⟩ in the colonial-era documents and ⟨8⟩ in the modern orthography implemented by the WLRP.