Learn Intermediate Chamorro – Free Online Lessons

Deepen your Chamorro with guided lessons on more complex sentence patterns commonly used by native speakers. If you’ve finished Beginner Chamorro, these lessons will help you take familiar words and sentence patterns to the next level, enabling you to more forms of expression beyond the basics.

TOTAL LESSONS: 20 (Last Updated: February 6, 2026)

Please note that this section is still in progress. We continue to gather and study sentence patterns within our learning community, write and organize content, learn how to explain things in accessible language and identify additional topics that will fit well in this section. Thank you for your patience, and for being on this journey together 😊

Intermediate Chamorro Learning Path

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🔄️ Section is in progress
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Friendly Learning Reminder: These lessons focus on practicing specific language patterns to help you form sentences and strengthen your understanding of Chamorro. In everyday conversation, native speakers may express the same ideas in different or more nuanced ways that don’t always match a single pattern exactly.

💡Try to use these patterns as tools for guided practice and study, and look to the native speakers in your life to help you grow in lived, spoken Chamorro. Happy studying!

🔄️ Describing People and Things

Start exploring richer ways to describe the world around you. In this section, we move beyond basic descriptive patterns and learn how to express ability, possibility, difficulty, and other nuanced qualities.

Groups: A Guide to Plural Forms in Chamorro
Describing with Nouns – “The Coconut Tree”
Describing with Nouns – “The Life of the Land (I Lina’la’ i Tanu’)”
Describing Who Someone Is – “Our Neighbor Totoro”
Describing with Adjectives – “The Small Rat (I cha’kan dikiki’)”
Describing Your Abilities – “I’m bad at dancing”
Describing What’s Possible – “It can be repaired”

🔄️ Making More Words for Increased Expressiveness

Chamorro frequently uses single words to convey thoughts and concepts that often require multiple words in English. This section will start exploring some common word transformations that you may hear and want to use in everyday conversation.

Making New Nouns

This section focuses on turning words and phrases into “noun-like” ideas. For example: the verb “to teach” can be transformed to become “teacher”.

Using The Article “i” – “What You Ate (I Un Kånnu’)”
Using IN and Possessive Pronouns – “What I Ate (I Kinanno’-hu)”
Using Reduplication – “The Teacher (I Fafa’na’gui)
Using The Man- Prefix – “The Ones Who Are Selling (I manmambébendi)”
Using Ma- and Possessive Pronouns – “Its repair (I mafa’maolek-ña)”

Forms of Reduplication

Chamorro has different forms of reduplication that communicate different nuances of thought, depending upon which part of the word is reduplicated and the kind of word we are reduplicating. This section will go through some of these different reduplication forms.

(TBD)

🔄️ Action Sentences (With Objects)

Start making action sentences with non-specific objects and learn new sentence forms for expressing thoughts differently.

Non-Specific Objects

Intro to Non-Specific Objects – The Coffee versus A Coffee
Past Tense: With Non-Specific Objects – “I bought coffee”
Present Tense: With Non-Specific Objects – “I am buying coffee”
Future Tense: With Non-Specific Objects – “I will buy coffee”
Commands: With Non-Specific Objects – “Buy some coffee”
Can: With Non-Specific Objects – “I can buy coffee”

Other Forms With Transitive Verbs

Doing Something For Someone – “I made you coffee”
When There’s No Doer: Part 1 – “The rock was dragged”
When There’s No Doer: Part 2 – “The rocks were dragged”
📎When There’s No Doer: Part 3 – “I will be helped”
Indefinite Forms with “Specific” Objects – “I will look for work”

Sentence “Balance” With Transitive Verbs

Chamorro speakers will frequently change the word order they use, to create sentences that are considered “balanced” from a Chamorro language worldview. This section will give an overview of this framework to help learners understand the logic around when and why different sentence structures are used.

Word Order: A Guide to Chamorro Sentence “Balance”

Speech Attribution

Speech attribution is often read or heard in storytelling, and are phrases that indicate who is speaking. This includes phrases like “He said”, “She answered” or “The woman answered them”. Chamorro has different patterns for speech attribution, which we’ll learn in this section.

Speech Attribution: Part 1 – “Ilek”
Speech Attribution: Part 2 – “Using the -IN- Infix”
Speech Attribution: Part 3 – “Using the Reciprocal A- Prefix”
Speech Attribution: Part 4 – “Using the Indefinite Man- Prefix”

🔄️ Action Sentences (Without Objects)

Learn how to make action sentences with intransitive verbs, when there are 3+ people doing the action.

Past Tense: Plural Forms – “We worked”
Present Tense: Plural Forms – “We are working”
Future Tense: Plural Forms – “We will work”
Commands: Plural Forms – “Work!”
Can: Plural Forms – “We can work”

🔄️ Other Action Sentences

Togetherness

Togetherness in Chamorro – “We were together at the party”
📎Using Nihi: Part 1 – “Let’s Go”
📎Using Nihi: Part 2 – “Let’s Go Together”
📎Using Nihi: Part 3 – “Let’s Go Buy Coffee Together”

“Don’t” Statements

Don’t: Part 1, Verbs With Objects – “Don’t Say That”
Don’t: Part 2, Using “Me” – “Don’t Ask Me”
Don’t: Part 3, Verbs Without Objects – “Don’t Run”
Don’t: Part 4, Using Adjectives – “Don’t Get Angry”
Don’t: Part 5, Activities Between 2 People – “Don’t Fight With Each Other”
Don’t: Part 6, Using Cha’mu – “Don’t Be Saying That”

🔄️ Chamorro Location Words

Location Words: Part 1 – Guatu
Location Words: Part 2 – Mågi
Location Words: Part 3 – Guini
Location Words: Part 4 – Guennao
Location Words: Part 5 – Guihi

📎On the Way: Using Location Words as Suffxes – “Bring it on the way here”

🔄️ Existence

When “Somebody” is Doing Something: “Somebody is making coffee”
Saying “Nobody” in Chamorro: “Nobody knows how to make medicine”
Saying “Never” in Chamorro: “I’ve never made coffee”
Saying “Sometimes” in Chamorro: “Sometimes I make coffee in the morning”
Saying “Sometimes” in Chamorro: “Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad”

🔄️ Chamorro Question Words

Asking “What?” – Håfa
Asking “Who?” – Håyi
Asking “Where?” – Månu nai
Asking “When?” – Ngai’an nai
Asking “Why?” – Håfa na
Asking “Which?” – Månu na
Asking “How Much? How Many?” – Kuantu
Asking “How?” – Taimanu

🔄️ Chamorro Numbers and Counting

The counting system most frequently used by speakers today uses Spanish loanwords, but Chamorro also has its own, indigenous counting system that is being revived by some language groups. This section will open with the “modern” counting system that borrows from Spanish, followed by lessons on the different counting systems that are indigenous to Chamorro.

Numbers and Counting: Part 1 – Spanish Numbers
Numbers and Counting: Part 2 – Intro to Indigenous Numbers & Counting
Numbers and Counting: Part 3 – Counting Living Things
Numbers and Counting: Part 4 - Counting Nonliving Things
Numbers and Counting: Part 5 – Counting Time
Numbers and Counting: Part 6 – Measurements
Numbers and Counting: Part 7 – Repetition and Grouping
Numbers and Counting: Part 8 – Order and Sequence

🔄️ Quick Reference Guides

Access quick summaries of specific word transformations with these reference guides. These present, in table format, word transformations by tense.

Non-Specific Objects: Using Man- Prefix with Transitive Verbs
Future Tense: Verb Forms for Future Tense
Future Tense Shortcuts: A Guide to Future Tense Contractions
Commands: Verb Forms for Giving Commands

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