Last Saturday, Jay led the Praktikan Pupuengi group through listening to and transcribing the love song Mungnga Masångan by Toni Quitugua. This song has long been in rotation on Jay’s Chamorro music playlist, so it felt like a full-circle moment to hear the practice group working through the lyrics together. It’s a great song for beginners—the pacing is slow and the lyrics use simple but emotional language. As always, this post includes Chamorro lyrics, an English translation and language notes. Happy listening!
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Lesson 35: Talking About Your Pets in Chamorro – “My Dog”
In this lesson, you’ll learn Chamorro patterns for talking about your animals and pets in Chamorro using the special classifier ga’-. By the end, you’ll be able to say phrases like “my dog,” “your cat,” and “Juan’s dog”, and be able to recognize these phrases when they are used in speech. As always, we’ve included Chamorro practice sentences, English translations, and Chamorro audio recordings by Jay Che’le to support your learning. Happy studying!
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Lesson 34: Talking About Your Beverages in Chamorro – “My Water”
In this lesson, you’ll learn how to talk about drinks that belong to you and others by using a special pattern that’s just for beverages. By the end of the lesson, you’ll be able to say phrases like “my coffee,” “Juan’s drink,” and “Maria’s water” with confidence, and start to recognize this pattern naturally in conversation or writing. As always, this post includes explanatory notes, practice sentences, English translations, and Chamorro audio recordings by Jay Che’le. Happy studying!
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Saying “There” in Chamorro: A Guide to Using Guatu
In this post, we’ll start practicing with Chamorro location words—starting with guatu, which means “there, in that direction” and is useful for when we want to talk about movement or action toward a place, person, or object. In this lesson we’ll focus on 9 common ways guatu is used, starting simple and expanding out to different variations. We’ve also included 40 sentence drills to help you get comfortable with using the patterns naturally in your own speech. To get the most out of this lesson, it is helpful to have familiarity with basic action sentences.
As always, this lesson has Chamorro sentence drills, English translations and Chamorro audio voiced by Jay Che’le, so you can hear the pronunciation as you practice. Happy studying!
Continue reading “Saying “There” in Chamorro: A Guide to Using Guatu”Kåntan Chamoru: Adios Guinaiya
For this Saturday’s Praktikan Pupuengi session, our friend Danet won the vote and chose Adios Guinaiya by Rose Martinez Certeza. The music is in an upbeat, East coast swing style, which contrasts with the singer’s sad tale of being left by their significant other. The group had a great time helping each other out to get these lyrics transcribed and some words were not immediately obvious. I was supposed to be resting during the session because of my headache, but everyone was having so much fun that I couldn’t help but jump in and participate.
As always, this post includes Chamorro lyrics and an English translation for Adios Guinaiya by Rose Martinez Certeza. Happy listening!
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Lengguahi-ta 