Author: Schyuler Lujan

Learning to speak, read and write Chamorro while creating digital materials to support our worldwide learning community.

My Deep Gratitude To All Of You

On By Schyuler LujanIn Announcements2 Comments

I want to take a moment and give a Si Yu’us Ma’åse – thank you – to everyone here, in our online Chamorro language learning community. We see all the activity here on this blog and in our practice groups, and it never fails to leave us in awe to see so many people persisting in learning and using the Chamorro language. In this post I want to give some specific shout-outs and highlights from the past few months:

Blog Activity

We are only 3 months into the year, and this site has logged over 21,000 views and over 31,000 audio downloads from across the world, mostly from the States, Guam, and the CNMI. I am staggered and honored that this blog can be part of your learning journeys. Thank you for being part of our online learning community, and for everything you do to learn our language and make Chamorro part of your lives.

Tip Jar and Gifts

THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to this blog with gifts, either directly on the site or on our digital tip jar! Everything you give us supports our efforts to create more digital materials and tools on this blog. I want to offer some specific shout-outs:

  • To the incredibly generous person who gifted my WordPress subscription, un dångkulu na si Yu’us ma’åse! Thank you for your gift, this ensures that the site will continue to host all of our content, ad-free, through August 2026.
  • To those who have contributed through our online tip jar, I am both honored and humbled by your generosity. A big thank you to Patliz, amanda.merriweather, Frankt, TJ, Lawrence Cruz, Janinacam_, Agradesimento, profchat4us, SYM!!!, Mary Clement, and all the anonymous donors. Un dångkulu na si Yu’us ma’åse!
  • To my first monthly supporter profchat4us, un dångkulu na si Yu’us ma’åse! Thank you for believing in our work here enough to want to offer your monthly support.

Online Practice Groups

After a break at the end of 2024 for the December holidays, our online Chamorro practice groups started up again in early January and have been going strong since then. Jay and I have been guiding our groups through some difficult content, and everyone continues to do an awesome job.

Some highlights from the past 3 months include:

  • Praktikan Ogga’an: We started the year reading a book about Chamorro food to expand our cooking vocabulary. Then we switched gears for Guam’s Mes Chamoru to read I Derechon I Taotao by Rosa Salas Palomo, followed by the historical fiction piece Håyi Mansakke? by Brigida D.L. Guerrero. These are some of the longest and most complicated texts we’ve ever read together, offering great opportunities for expanding our vocabulary and grammar.
  • Praktikan Pupuengi: Jay continues to lead our Saturday evening practice group with listening comprehension activities on a selection of songs exclusively from Daniel De Leon Guerrero. Since this shift in song selection, we’ve transcribed and translated 21 of his songs and have 15 left to go before we refresh our song list. For our longtime members, we are really seeing improvement in listening comprehension. Biba hamyu!

If you are interested in joining our groups, please fill out the contact form to express interest.

Other Work

PISACON 2025: Jay and I led a workshop at this year’s PISACON (Pacific Islander Student Alliance Conference), held at the University of Washington in Seattle in late March. In our workshop titled Our Words, Like Waves: Reclaiming Our Pacific Languages in the Diaspora, we guided students representing islands from across the Pacific through our four pillars for learning and reclaiming our languages. We covered topics like the impacts of colonization, the importance of resilience, intuitive learning approaches, and the role of community. The opportunity to present our work to a wider Pasifika / Pacific Islander audience was an incredible and deeply emotional experience for both of us, and we feel so honored to have been part of this conference.

Chamorro Parsing Workshop: We also attended a virtual workshop hosted by Dr. Sandra Chung and Dr. David Ruskin about using technology for parsing Chamorro words (aka: finding the root words of transformed words). I presented my Chamorro dictionary work for this blog and also learned more about the other online Chamorro dictionary efforts and the current parsing tool. This was an introductory gathering, and I was thrilled at the number of speakers who spoke in Chamorro, weighing in with their thoughts and concerns around our various efforts. Lexicon expansion, text mining, and the potential of algorithms and / or machine learning for creating or enhancing language learning tools has long been an interest for me. But the gathering prompted me to consider prioritizing these projects that have been at the back of my mind since grad school.

Final Thoughts

It has been a packed first few months to start this year, and I’m looking forward to working on language projects and continuing to make headway in our practice groups. In the coming months it will just be heads-down as we continue with our practice groups and putting more content on the blog (including the rest of the transcripts for the Fanékungok Yan Si Dabit podcast), now that things should be slowing down.

Again, un dångkulu na si Yu’us ma’åse todus hamyu! Keep going in your learning journeys, don’t give up 🙂

4 Do’s and Don’ts for Learning From Chamorro Speakers

On By Schyuler LujanIn Study TipsLeave a comment

When I first started learning Chamorro back in 2020, my teacher at the time gave me this advice: “Find a Chamorro speaker to help you.” While this seems like great advice, for many learners it is easier said than done. Not only does speakership decline make connecting with speakers increasingly difficult, we are also given little to no preparation for navigating the complex dynamics that we may encounter when we approach speakers. Therefore, it is important for us as language learners to learn how to best interact with speakers because we want to give ourselves the best chance of making it a good experience for everybody. I had to learn all of this the hard way, so in this post I am going to share some key ground rules and the 4 key do’s and don’ts that I’ve learned for interacting with Chamorro speakers.

This is a written version of what we presented for our PISACON workshop when we were talking about practicing good etiquette for interacting with speakers. You can view our original presentation slides on Canva.

Continue reading “4 Do’s and Don’ts for Learning From Chamorro Speakers” →

Kåntan Chamoru: Puntan Yan Fu’una

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Legends, Chamorro SongsLeave a comment

We cancelled our Saturday evening practice group this week because Jay and I were hosting a language workshop at the 2025 PISA conference. So here is a song that our Saturday evening practice group transcribed a while back, which is the legend of Fu’una and Puntan and the creation of the Mariana Islands, sung by Daniel De Leon Guerrero. If you enjoy Chamorro legends and Chamorro music, you will also want to check out the songs Trongkon Niyok and Åchu’ Natibu. In this post, you’ll find the Chamorro lyrics and an English translation of the song Puntan Yan Fu’una by Daniel De Leon Guerrero. Happy listening!

Continue reading “Kåntan Chamoru: Puntan Yan Fu’una” →

PISACON 2025

On By Schyuler LujanIn Announcements1 Comment

Jay and I cancelled our Saturday practice groups this weekend because we will be teaching a workshop at this year’s PISACON (Pacific Islander Student Alliance Conference). Our workshop is about learning and reclaiming our languages, based on our own “on the ground” experiences of learning and teaching the Chamorro language. For anyone who cannot attend the conference or our workshop, you can access our presentation slides and accompanying booklet at the links below:

We are very excited to present at this conference, because it is specifically for Pacific Islander college students. Although Jay and I completed all of our higher education in the PNW, we have never been to an event like this one. So un dångkulu na si Yu’us ma’åse to the people putting on this conference, and for making a better today and tomorrow for Pacific Islander college students here on the West Coast.

Fanékungok yan si Dabit: I Tinituhon

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro VoicesLeave a comment

My friend Dabit Taitingfong just launched a new podcast, Fanékungok yan si Dabit, where he chats with different guests entirely in Chamorro. He created this podcast to make more Chamorro conversations accessible online, and in the first few episodes, he speaks with second-language learners. To support this podcast, consider visiting his online tip jar!

This post includes a Chamorro transcription of the first episode, I Tinituhon, which was done by our friend Alicia Aguigui Dart. She was the one who started our original Saturday evening study groups at the end of 2020, and for years, when I had to pause my own learning, she kept the online space thriving—keeping my learning going too. Whenever she can, she’ll be transcribing episodes and has generously allowed me to share them here on the blog. To support her amazing work, please visit her online tip jar!

Continue reading “Fanékungok yan si Dabit: I Tinituhon” →