Here’s a song we listened to during one of our evening practice groups that has some nice feel-good vibes. I will definitely be clinging to those vibes as the days get shorter and darker here in the Pacific Northwest. So here are some Chamorro lyrics and an English translation for “Inalåhan gi Kanton Tåsi” by I Gurupun I Mañe’lu. Hope you enjoy it!
Continue reading “Kåntan Chamoru: Inalåhan Gi Kanton Tåsi”Year: 2023
Lesson 23: Talking About What We “Must” or “Should” Do With Intransitive Verbs – “I must stay”
Continuing with our basic action sentences, we will learn how to make must / should statements with our intransitive verbs. We will be able to say sentences like “I must sleep” or “You must/should rest” by putting the word debidi (also spelled as debi de) at the front of our future tense sentences.
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Legend: Si Chaifi
This is another Chamorro legend that I never heard about until I started learning Chamorro, which is the legend of Chaifi, the god of fire or the underworld. This is the version written by Georg Fritz, who was a German colonial official of the Northern Mariana Islands starting in 1899. I have a transcription of the Chamorro as it was written by Georg Fritz (with updated spelling) and an English translation in this post, but you can also access it in a pdf from a Digital Library Project compiled and maintained by Dirk Spennemann. There is also a paper by Steve Pagel that dives into the more linguistic aspects of the language, and includes a line-by-line translation of the legend across all three languages (English, German, and Chamorro). The narration for this story is done by Jay Che’le. Hope you enjoy it!
Kåntan Chamoru: Åchu’ Natibu
In our evening practice group, I’ve been pushing Jay to include more songs from Daniel DeLeon Guerrero because his use of the language is fun and deep, the storytelling is always enjoyable, and I’m always guaranteed to pick up new words or phrases. I can’t count the number of times I learn a new word (to me) in Chamorro, only for Jay to say, “Oh, I’ve heard that word used in a song.” And it’s usually a song by Daniel DeLeon Guerrero! So here are Chamorro lyrics and an English translation for the song “Åchu’ Natibu” by Daniel DeLeon Guerrero, which is a song about Åchu’ Fouha that includes Chaifi (god of fire). Hope you enjoy it!
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Latti, Haligi, yan Tåsa
A big part of my own Chamorro language learning journey has been reading and collecting books and articles about the Mariana Islands. One gorgeous book I recommend reading is “Latte in the Marianas”, which you can purchase from the Guampedia Heritage Gift Shop. The majority of the book is written in English, but there are two essays written in Chamoru with English translations included. This is one of those essays, written by Påle’ Eric Forbes, about the Latte/Latti stone. It can be difficult to find long-form written Chamorro (other than the Bible), so this essay gave our study group some excellent practice. The narration for this is done by Jay Che’le. Listen and enjoy!
Lengguahi-ta 