| Chamorro | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fino'Chamorro | ||||
| Spoken in | Guam Northern Mariana Islands |
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| Region | Western Pacific Ocean | |||
| Ethnicity | Chamorro people | |||
| Native speakers | First language: more than 60,000 (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Austronesian
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| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | Guam Northern Mariana Islands |
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| Regulated by | No official regulation | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | ch | |||
| ISO 639-2 | cha | |||
| ISO 639-3 | cha | |||
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Chamorro (Chamorro: Fino' Chamoru or simply Chamoru) is a Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) language, spoken on the Mariana Islands (Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan) by about 47,000 people (about 35,000 people on Guam and about 12,000 in the N. Marianas).[1]
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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. On Guam (called "Guåhan" by Chamorro speakers, from the word guaha, meaning "have", but its English meaning is, "We Have", from the idea that they had everything they needed,[2][3]) the number of native Chamorro speakers has dwindled in the last decade or so, while in the Northern Mariana Islands, young Chamorros still speak the language fluently. Various representatives from Guam have unsuccessfully lobbied the United States to take action to promote and protect the language.
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 American English, which is commonplace throughout the inhabited Marianas.
Unlike most of its neighbors, Chamorro is not a Micronesian or Polynesian language. Rather, like Palauan, it constitutes a possibly independent branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family. Its indigenous origins are thus somewhat obscure. A 2008 analysis of the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database[4] suggested an 85% confidence level that it is closest to the Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages.
Chamorro also has much Spanish influence, due to three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. Many Chamorro nouns, adjectives, prepositions, numerals, and verbs are of Spanish origin. Under a historical point of view, it may be considered a mixed language, even if it is now independent and unique.[5] When Guam was colonised by the United States, Chamorro was at the pre-stage of being transformed into a Spanish-based creole, and the transfer of rule made it so that it never reached that point.
| Letter | pronunciation |
|---|---|
| ’ | [ʔ] (glottal stop) |
| A | [æ] |
| Å | [ɑ] |
| B | [b] |
| Ch | [ts] |
| D | [d] |
| E | [e] |
| F | [f] |
| G | [ɡ] |
| Gu | [ɡʷ] |
| H | [h] |
| I | [i] |
| K | [k] |
| L | [l] |
| M | [m] |
| N | [n] |
| Ñ | [ɲ] |
| Ng | [ŋ] |
| O | [o] |
| P | [p] |
| R | [ɾ] |
| 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 [dʒ]); nor are N and Ñ always distinguished. Thus the Guamanian place name spelled Yona is pronounced 'dzo-nia' [dzo.ɲa], not 'yo-na' [jo.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 in between vowels; and as a retroflex approximant at the beginning of words [ɻ].
Chamorro has geminate consonants which are written double (GG, DD, KK, MM, NGNG, PP, 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), Hagåtña (Capital of Guam); B, D, and G are not distinguished from P, T, and K in that position.
Chamorro is an agglutinative language, grammatically allowing root words to be modified by a number of affixes. For example, masanganenñaihon "talked awhile (with/to)", passive marking prefix ma-, root verb sangan, referential 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 (e.g.: bumobola "playing ball" from bola "ball, play ball" with verbalizing infix -um- and reduplication of first syllable of root).
Chamorro is predicate-initial, head-marking language. It has a rich agreement system both in the nominal and in the verbal domains. The following table gives the possessor-noun agreement suffixes:[6]
| Person/Number | Suffix |
|---|---|
| 1 sg | -hu / -ku |
| 2 sg | -mu |
| 3 sg | -ña |
| 1 incl du/pl | -ta |
| 1 excl du/pl | -(n)mami |
| 2 du/pl | -(n)miyu |
| 3 du/pl | -(n)ñiha |
Chamorro is also known for its wh-agreement in the verb: these agreement morphemes agree with features (roughly, the Grammatical case feature) of the question phrase, and replace the regular subject–verb agreement:[7]
| (1) | Ha-fa'gasi | si | Juan | i | kareta. |
| 3sSA[8]-wash | PND[9] | Juan | the | car |
'Juan washed the car.'
| (2) | Hayi | fuma'gasi | i | kareta? |
| who? | WH[nom].[10] wash | the | car |
'Who washed the car?'
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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 |
Chamorro language is studied at the University of Guam and in several academic institutions of Guam and the Northern Marianas.
Researches in several countries are also studying different aspects of Chamorro. In 2009, the Chamorro Linguistics International Network (CHIN) [1] was established in Bremen, Germany. CHiN was founded on occasion of the Chamorro Day (27 September 2009) which was part of the programme of the Festival of Languages [2]. The foundation ceremony was attended by people from Germany, Guam, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States of America. [11]
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