Year: 2023

Talking About Actions Without Objects in Chamorro – Introduction to Intransitive Verbs and Affixes

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: Beginner6 Comments

This lesson is part of the Beginner Chamorro learning path.

In this lesson, we’ll begin learning how to talk about actions that aren’t done to anyone or anything else—actions like standing, walking, or dancing. These are everyday activities that people simply do. To use these action words in Chamorro sentences, the word often needs to change form first. We’ll take a closer look at how these changes work and why they matter. Understanding these patterns will help you start forming action sentences with these words and will prepare you for many of the sentence patterns you’ll encounter later in the language. Happy studying!

taitai mås

How to Understand Longer Thoughts in Chamorro

On By Schyuler LujanIn Study Tips1 Comment

Do you ever feel like your comprehension drops off when confronted with a long stream of Chamorro? At the end of last year, this would happen to me all the time – when a speaker would start talking to me, I felt like I could only grab the first 5-6 words of what they were saying before I’d get lost in a jumble of Chamorro that I couldn’t process. The same thing happened with reading; all those really long sentences felt impossible to process or took egregious amounts of time to translate, and I’d always feel discouraged. Since January I’ve been using a method called chunking, which has made it easier for me to follow and comprehend more long-form Chamorro. In this post I will talk about how I use this method to learn Chamorro.

taitai mås

How to Say “I Can Make the Coffee” in Chamorro – Talking About What We Can and Can’t Do With Transitive Verbs

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: Beginner4 Comments

This lesson is part of the Beginner Chamorro learning path.

Being able to say what someone can do is an important step toward more natural conversation. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use siña to talk about ability in Chamorro. We’ll practice building sentences such as “I can drink the coffee” and “You can’t borrow the car” using clear patterns you can reuse in everyday situations. Happy studying!

Continue reading “How to Say “I Can Make the Coffee” in Chamorro – Talking About What We Can and Can’t Do With Transitive Verbs” →

I Yori by Mike Duenas – Chamorro Lyrics and English Translation

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro SongsLeave a comment

On Saturday evenings our practice group has been doing something new. We pick a Chamorro song, listen to it, write down all the lyrics in Chamorro and then translate the song into English. At the end, we all mute ourselves and sing along. This is actually one of the primary methods that my boyfriend used to learn Chamorro when he was in high school – he listened to Chamorro songs over and over, wrote down the lyrics, and then translated them. When he proposed this activity for our evening practice group I was less than thrilled because I prefer stories to music, and listening comprehension is my weakest skill. But damn, this exercise really helps! We’ve been doing this for almost 3 months now, and I can really see an improvement in my listening comprehension. Here are the lyrics and translation we did for “I Yori” by Mike Duenas, which is now one of my favorite Chamorro songs.

taitai mås

How to Say “I Must Drink the Coffee” in Chamorro – Expressing Obligation with Transitive Verbs

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: Beginner5 Comments

Sometimes we need to talk about the things we must do—finish our work, bring something to someone, or complete an important task. In this lesson, we’ll practice using the word debi to express these kinds of strong obligations in Chamorro. Through simple sentence patterns and examples, you’ll learn how to say things like “I must clean the kitchen,” “He must buy the food,” or “You must call your father.” These patterns will help you start expressing responsibilities and necessary actions in everyday conversation. Happy studying!

taitai mås