When you listen to native speakers, have you ever heard them say really small words like po or bu, but couldn’t find them in the dictionaries or grammar books? These tiny words are examples of how native speakers often shorten future markers and pronouns, blending them together to speak more quickly and naturally.

I was recently reminded of how challenging these colloquial shortcuts are for learners, when Jay and I were talking to our måli’. We can hear these shortcuts everywhere in native speech, but it’s typically only the “full” forms of future tense statements that are taught in books and classroom environments. This is why these shortcuts can be challenging for learners to recognize. In this post, we’ll unpack these common shortcuts so you can better recognize and understand them in Chamorro songs and real conversations.

If you want to skip directly to the summary table of shortcuts, click here. Otherwise, click Continue Reading to start with a brief introduction to future markers in Chamorro. Happy studying!