How to Say “The Woman Is Happy” in Chamorro – Describing Others

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: Beginner14 Comments

This lesson is part of the Beginner Chamorro learning path.

Now it’s time to create more complex descriptions by describing nouns with adjectives, so we can say things like The child is tired or The woman is happy. We can also describe nouns with other nouns with sentences like The man is a teacher or The teacher is a singer. To make these types of sentences in Chamorro, we need to understand how the word order differs from English. We will also learn the article i and its accompanying vowel harmony rules, which dictate how sounds change to make our speech smoother. This post includes explanatory notes for these concepts, practice drills for vowel harmony, Chamorro sentences, English translations, audio pronunciations, and a Quizlet Deck for additional practice. Happy studying!

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How to Say “Because” in Chamorro – “I’m tired because I’m hungry”

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: Beginner6 Comments

This lesson is part of the Beginner Chamorro learning path.

At the beginning of our learning, we can be focused on a lot of small sentences. Up until now these are the sentences we’ve learned how to make, sentences like “I am tired”; “They are students”; “We are tired students.” Now we are going to start making our thoughts a little longer by linking these short sentences with the word “because.” So instead of many small, disconnected thoughts we can start to smooth out our speech with sentences like “I am tired because I am a student.” In this post we will learn about the word sa’ in Chamorro and how to use it. Happy studying!

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I inai yan i tasi

On By Schyuler LujanIn Personal WritingLeave a comment

Now that I’m learning Chamoru, one thing I love to do is write little stories. Earlier this year I read some English translations of work by Misuzu Kaneko, a Japanese writer of children’s poetry. Her poems charmed me with their deep empathy for the world around her, whether it was the man selling flowers or the road buried under the snow. To write my own stories, I pull inspiration both from her poetry and my memories of my grandmother. This is the first story I attempted, about the sand and the ocean.

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