unknown, given the death of the last native speakers a century and a quarter in the past, but given that the colonial orthography was based on English values as spoken in the seventeenth century, some clues are provided. The short vowel before was often replaced by in colonial documents. Given that open front unrounded before was often syncopated, it is likely this allophone approached . Dialectal variation aside, it is likely that may have also backed to in some environments. The long vowel was often written with in colonial documents before or , indicating it may have shortened to in these environments. A similar process also occurs in Abenakian languages. In the development of Massachusett, weakens to , which triggers k-palatization and vowel affection in certain environments. The long vowel is written in a myriad of ways, which may just be the difficulty in rendering the vowel according to English spelling rules as used in the colonial orthography. It is likely that most instances were generally , but it most likely backed or . The long, nasal vowel (possibly better represented by to indicate length in addition to nasality) may also frequently approach the mid-open nasal . Before , colonial writers used , possibly indicating an allophone before . The colonial orthography assigns vowels with a circumflex to write them, but this was not done consistently. A silent (before ) and (elsewhere) was often used to indicate nasality, but writers often confused usage of the circumflex, to mark nasality, and the acute accent, to mark stress and length. The long vowel , represented in the colonial orthography by or and in the modern one, was often written with in the earliest colonial writings, suggesting a change from a mid-back vowel or close-mid vowel to a close-back , which can be reconstructed from development. For example, 'snake' is askꝏk (ask8k) and descends from Proto-Algonquian *aθko·ka and Proto-Eastern Algonquian *axko·k. Eliot created a letter represented in the modern Wampanoag script as to distinguish the long 'oo' from the short 'oo,' but noted that the vowel he was trying to represent was between the two. Just as , represented in Algonquian linguistics as , shifted to , 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