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Chamorro language

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Chamorro
Chamoru
Native toGuam, Northern Mariana Islands
RegionWestern Pacific Ocean
Native speakers
First language: more than 60,000
Official status
Official language in
Guam, Northern Mariana Islands
Language codes
ISO 639-1ch
ISO 639-2cha
ISO 639-3cha
ELPChamorro
Chamorro language spread in the United States

Chamorro (Chamoru) is the native language of the Chamorro or Chamoru of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. It is also used in the mainland United States by immigrants and some of their descendants.

It is an agglutinative language, grammatically allowing root words to be modified by an unlimited number of affixes. For example, masanganenñaihon "talked awhile (with/to)", passivizing prefix ma-, root verb sangan, directional suffix i "to" (forced morphophonemically to change to e) with excrescent consonant n, and suffix ñaihon "a short amount of time". Thus "Masanganenñaihon gue' ": "He/she was told (something) for a while".

Chamorro has many Spanish loanwords and other words have Spanish etymological roots (e.g. tenda "shop/store" from Spanish tienda), which may lead some to mistakenly conclude that the language is a Spanish Creole: Chamorro very much uses its loan words in a Micronesian way (eg: bumobola "playing ball" from bola "ball, play ball" with verbalizing infix -um- and reduplication of first syllable of root).

The numbers of Chamorro speakers have declined in recent years, and the younger generations are less likely to know the language. The influence of English has caused the language to become endangered. Various representatives from Guam have unsuccessfully lobbied the United States to take action to promote and protect the language.[citation needed] In Guam (called "Guåhan" by Chamorro speakers, from the word guaha, meaning "have"), the number of native Chamorro speakers have dwindled in numbers in the last decade or so while in the Northern Mariana Islands, young Chamorros still speak the language fluently.

There are approximately 50,000 to 75,000 speakers of Chamorro throughout the Marianas archipelago. It is still common among Chamorro households in the Northern Marianas, but fluency has greatly decreased among Guamanian Chamorros during the years of American rule in favor of (a largely pidginized) American English, which is commonplace throughout the inhabited Marianas.

As mentioned earlier, it is spoken in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands: Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. Log on to [1] for more information.

Chamorro Pride!!

Alphabet

Letter pronunciation
’ [ʔ] (glottal stop)
A [æ]
Å [ɑ]
B [b]
Ch [ts]
D [d]
E [e]
F [f]
G [g], Gu [ɡʷ]
H [h]
I [i]
K [k]
L [l]
M [m]
N [n]
Ñ [ɲ]
Ng [ŋ]
O [o]
P [p]
R [ɾ]; Rr [r]
S [s]
T [t]
U [u]
Y [dz]

Note that the letter Y is pronounced more like 'dz' (an approximation of the regional Spanish pronunciation of "Y"/"Ll" as [ɟʝ]; nor are N and Ñ always distinguished. Thus the Guamanian place name spelled Yona is pronounced 'dzo-nia', not 'yo-na' as might be expected. Note also that Ch is usually pronounced like 'ts' rather than 'tsh' and that A and Å are not always distinguished in written Chamorro (often being written simply as 'A'). R in Chamorro is pronounced like [ɾ] like Spanish and Chamorro also has a trill [r] which is spelled RR.

Chamorro has geminate consonants which are written double (GG, DD, KK, MM, NGNG, PP, RR, SS, TT), native diphthongs AI and AO, plus OI, OE, IA, IU, IE in loanwords; penultimate stress, except where marked otherwise with an acute accent, as in asút "blue" or dángkulo "big". Unstressed vowels are limited to /ə i u/, though they are often spelled A E O. Syllables may be consonant-vowel-consonant, as in che’lu "sibling", diskatga "unload", mamahlao "shy", or oppop "lie face down", gatus (old word for 100), Hagatña "Agana", though B D G are not distinguished from P T K in that position.

Chamorro basic phrases

Numbers

Current common Chamorro uses only number words of Spanish origin: unu, dos, tres, etc. Old Chamorro used different number words based on categories: "Basic numbers" (for date, time, etc), "living things", "inanimate things", and "long objects".

English Modern Chamorro Old Chamorro: Basic Numbers Old Chamorro: Living Things Old Chamorro: Inanimate Things Old Chamorro: Long Objects
one unu/una (time) hacha maisa hachiyai takhachun
two dos hugua hugua hugiyai takhuguan
three tres tulu tato to'giyai taktulun
four kuåttro' fatfat fatfat fatfatai takfatun
five singko' lima lalima limiyai takliman
six sais gunum guagunum gonmiyai ta'gunum
seven sietti fiti fafiti fitgiyai takfitun
eight ocho' gualu guagualu guatgiyai ta'gualun
nine nuebi sigua sasigua sigiyai taksiguan
ten dies manot maonot manutai takmaonton
hundred siento gatus gatus gatus gatus/manapo
  • The number 10 and its multiples up to 90 are: dies(10), benti(20), trenta(30), kuårenta(40), sinkuenta(50), sisenta(60), sitenta(70), ochenta(80), nubenta(90)

References

Chamorro edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  • Ethnologue: Languages of the World (unknown ed.). SIL International.[This citation is dated, and should be substituted with a specific edition of Ethnologue]
  • http://ns.gov.gu/language.html
  • http://www.offisland.com/thelanguage.html
  • http://www.chamorro.com/fino/fino.html
  • http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Chamorro-english/
  • Chamorro Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database
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