Within SNEA, Massachusett shares the most similarity to Narragansett and Nipmuc, its immediate neighbors, with a handful of lexical items indicating an east-west division. For example, the word 'fish' is () in Massachusett, In Nipmuc and Narragansett , all likely pronounced similarly to from Proto-Algonquian *, contrasting with Mohegan-Pequot and Quiripi which derives from a local stem * and an ancient alternative stem for 'fish,' *, likely Proto-Western SNEA * . Although Nipmuc is close to Massachusett, it is conservative in that it retains more noun and verb finals that are truncated in most environments in other SNEA languages.