Talking About Togetherness in Chamorro: How to Say “We Were Together” and More

Whether you’re reminiscing about time with family, expressing gratitude for a gathering, or even writing your next love song, these all involve talking about being together with others. In this post, we’ll learn how we can talk about togetherness in Chamorro, including expressing thoughts in the past, present and future tenses. You’ll also find Chamorro example sentences, Chamorro audio narrations by Jay Che’le, and English translations to guide your learning. Happy studying!

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Doing Things For or To Someone in Chamorro: Key Verbs Explained

In Chamorro, some verbs don’t just need an action—they need a recipient. If you give something, someone must receive it. If you teach something, someone must learn it. These types of verbs require not just the thing being acted upon, but also the person receiving the action. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at how this concept is applied in Chamorro, start practicing with some of the most common verbs that are used this way, and explain why these verbs can be challenging for our English-oriented brains. By the end, you’ll have a better grasp of this concept by practicing with commonly used verbs. Happy studying!

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Describing Things in Chamorro, Part 1: Noun-Noun Descriptions

When we start out in the Chamorro language, one of the first things we learn is how to describe nouns with adjectives, in phrases such as dångkulo’ na kareta (big car) or yayas na palao’an (tired woman). We learn the structure that teaches us to use the na particle, and it’s easy to start with because the word order is the same as English. But Chamorro includes different ways of making descriptions, and in this blog post we will start to learn how to describe things with nouns to say phrases such as “olive oil” or “water bottle.” This post includes Chamorro audio pronunciations of all phrases voiced by Jay Che’le. Happy studying!

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Speech Attribution in Chamorro part 3: The Reciprocal Á- Prefix

Continuing our blog series on speech attribution in Chamorro, we will learn how the reciprocal á- prefix is used to indicate who is speaking in Chamorro stories. This prefix is used in sentences such as “The women asked each other” or “Juan and I sang to each other.” The reciprocal á- prefix is used in more than just speech attribution, but it can be helpful to learn this prefix in the context of storytelling. This post includes an introduction to the á- prefix, sentence drills in Chamorro with the audio, and English translations. Happy studying!

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Speech Attribution in Chamorro part 2: Using the -IN- Infix

This post is part 2 of the blog series on Chamorro speech attribution, where we learn about the most common ways we can indicate who is speaking in a story (ie: he said, she asked, the woman asked her, etc.). Understanding speech attribution helps us if we are reading or listening to stories in the language, if we want to write our own stories, or if we are interested in translating existing works into Chamorro. It can also give our speaking and storytelling more flavor 😉 In this post we will learn about speech attribution patterns that use the -IN- infix. This post includes an introduction to the -IN- infix, how to transform words with this affix, and practice drills. All Chamorro drills include audio in Chamorro. This is a fairly long post, with 10 sections of practice drills. Happy studying!

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