Language in Colonial Connecticut (1600s–1700s): English Dominant, Native Tongues Displaced

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, English was the primary language of the Connecticut Colony, brought by Puritan settlers from Massachusetts and England. It quickly became the language of government, law, commerce, and daily life.

Simultaneously, several Algonquian languages were spoken by indigenous peoples, notably Mohegan, Pequot, and Narragansett. As English settlement expanded, disease, war, and displacement caused these languages to decline sharply. By the late 1700s, English had overwhelmingly supplanted them in public life, though remnants survived in place names and isolated communities.