Classification
Munsee and Unami are assigned to the Algonquian language family, and are analysed as members of Eastern Algonquian, a subgroup of Algonquian.
The languages of the Algonquian family constitute a group of historically related languages descended from a common source language, Proto-Algonquian. The Algonquian languages are spoken across Canada from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast; on the American Plains; south of the Great Lakes; and on the Atlantic coast. Many of the Algonquian languages are now extinct.
The Eastern Algonquian languages were spoken on the Atlantic coast from the Canadian Maritime provinces to North Carolina. Many of the languages are now extinct, and some are known only from very fragmentary records. Eastern Algonquian is considered a genetic subgroup within the Algonquian family, that is, the Eastern Algonquian languages share a sufficient number of common innovations to suggest that they descend from a common intermediate source, Proto-Eastern Algonquian. The latter proto-language is hypothesized to descend from Proto-Algonquian.
The linguistic closeness of Munsee and Unami entails that they share an immediate common ancestor which may be called Common Delaware; the two languages have diverged in distinct ways from Common Delaware.
Several shared phonological innovations support a genetic subgroup consisting of the Delaware languages and Mahican, sometimes referred to as Delawaran. Nonetheless Unami and Munsee are more closely related to each other than to Mahican. Some historical evidence suggests commonalities between Mahican and Munsee.
The line of historical descent is therefore Proto-Algonquian > Proto-Eastern Algonquian > Delawarean > Common Delaware + Mahican, with Common Delaware splitting into Munsee and Unami.
Read more about this topic: Delaware Languages