Online Resources for Learning Chamoru

This page links to a variety of online resources for learning Chamorro, and to content in Chamorro for immersing yourself in the language. If any links are broken, please let me know and I will update the link.

Updated: July 19, 2025

Online Practice Groups

Saturday (PDT) Online Practice Groups
We gather every Saturday at 9am Pacific Time and 6pm Pacific Time to practice the Chamorro language online via Zoom. Jay and I facilitate two different groups, and their details are below. If you are interested in joining, email me via the Contact page with the name(s) of the group(s) you want to join, and I will send you a WhatsApp join link.

Praktikan Ogga’an

Meeting Time & Location: Saturdays 9am PDT / Sundays 2am CHst via Zoom (90 minute session)
Learning Activity: Read stories in Chamorro and translate them into English, to learn vocabulary and grammar. Includes general chit-chat in Chamorro for light conversation practice. All learning levels are welcome.

Praktikan Pupuengi

Meeting Time & Location: Saturdays 6pm PDT / Sundays 11am CHst via Zoom (90 – 120 minute session; session duration varies based on song complexity)
Learning Activity: Listen to Chamorro songs and transcribe the Chamorro lyrics to improve listening comprehension. Includes general chit-chat in Chamorro for conversation practice. All learning levels are welcome.

Fino’ CHamoru På’go – Online Language Immersion Practice Group
These are free, weekly online Chamoru language sessions on Zoom that are offered by a Chamorro language teacher based on Guam. To be admitted to the group, you must follow the instructor’s instagram page and send a direct message asking to be added to the group. This is to help the instructor monitor the group, because we had issues with Zoom bombing last year. You can find the instagram page here: https://www.instagram.com/finochamorupagu/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ

Private Language Tutoring

Private Chamorro Language Instruction – Click for Details
If you are interested in paying for individual Chamorro language instruction, Jesus Lujan offers sessions virtually and in-person for adult language learners. You can sign up for individual instruction, or you can sign up as a group and receive a group discount.

Online Instructional Resources

@dihan.dabit
You can find my friend Dabit Taitingfong on Instagram, where he teaches bite-sized Chamorro language lessons in the Chamorro language. Great for the busy learner who is on-the-go.

LearningChamoru.com
This a centralized online learning platform for Chamoru with audio drills and dialogues in Chamoru. It also includes a few lessons for structured learning.

Eyak Nåya – Chamorro Language Learning Series by Ray Barcinas
A new YouTube channel to learn the Chamorro language from Ray Barcinas, who is a native speaker from Rota. He also publishes his fantasy fiction series called Faneyåkan Lina’la’ to this channel.

The Chamorro Language
This blog is a great all-in-one resource for getting started with simple phrases, word lists and grammar concepts.

Chamorro Textbooks

Spoken Chamorro by Donald Topping and Pedro Ogo
Spoken Chamorro is an older book, but it has hundreds of sentence drills, which are great for learning sentence structure and grammar concepts. In all honesty, this book was really challenging for me to use as a beginner, second-language learner because different concepts are mixed together in the sentence drills, making it difficult to identify patterns. But it’s still great for getting example sentences, if you know the words you want to practice. Access a free, online scanned PDF of the first edition via the KPV collection.

Chamorro Reference Grammar by Donald Topping and Bernadita Dungca
I also highly recommend owning this book, although it’s also better used as a reference book for people who have at least a solid, beginner level understanding in the language. It is so helpful for understanding different word forms, grammar topics and also word order. Access a free, online scanned PDF of this book via Scribd.

Chamorro-English Phrase Book by Påle’ Roman de Vera
This is a collection of vocabulary lists and phrase lists (organized topically) by Påle’ Roman de Vera. It’s from 1932, but it’s still the best and most easily accessible phrasebook available today for Chamorro. Just note that some native speakers may consider his language old-fashioned.

Chamorro Grammar by Dr. Sandra Chung
This book is available online for free as a PDF. At about 750 pages, it’s pretty comprehensive but also pretty technical from a linguistic perspective. It’s great to have for reference, and there are plenty of sentence examples from natural spoken Chamorro. Overall, this book becomes increasingly useful as you progress in the language, and you can search for words to find example sentences. If the above link does not work, you can also access the book for free at this link.

Finu’ Chamorro for Beginners by Dr. Faye Untalan
This workbook is designed to provide Chamorro language teachers with a curriculum for classroom use. Therefore, this book is not designed to support learners outside of traditional classroom settings, and it also lacks audio pronunciations and answer keys. Because of this, I don’t recommend this book as your primary resource if you are a beginner and a self-study learner. But it’s still useful reference, since we have so few instructional books available. It can also be a good resource for homeschool or community groups who want to facilitate their own Chamorro classes or study groups, as long as you already know the language.

Chamorro Dictionaries

Revised and Updated Chamorro English Dictionary
This is a project out of the CNMI to update the Chamorro-English dictionary. Updates include multiple example sentences with every word, accurate part-of-speech tagging, and updated orthography. This is my go-to Chamorro dictionary.

diksionåriu.com
This is an online version of The Official Chamorro English Dictionary that was published in 2009. They have a downloadable .csv file of all their entries, which is great for offline access.

Diccionario Chamorro-Castellano
This dictionary is by Påle’ Roman de Vera, and is a Chamorro-Spanish dictionary, and is a critical resource because it includes many older words and older definitions of words. Use Google Lens on your phone to easily translate the Spanish.

Chamorro-English Dictionary by Topping, Ogo and Dungca
This is the dictionary that most people start out with. Even with all the free dictionaries online, this is still great to have, especially with the really useful word classifications.

Chamorro Dictionary
This is an online Chamorro-English dictionary that is on the chamoru.info website.

Dictionary and Grammar of the Chamorro Language of the Island of Guam
This is the dictionary by Edward von Pressig, available for free download from The Internet Archive.

Chamorro to English Kindle Dictionary
Here is a link to download the Chamorro – English dictionary I formatted for the Kindle. It has about 9k – 10k words. It’s far from complete, but it can be helpful for looking up some words when you are reading Chamorro texts on your Kindle. This folder also includes the dictionary in an Excel format.

Chamoru Morphological Analysis
This is definitely a timesaver for any Chamoru language learner. You enter a word into the tool, and it tries to identify the root word and all the transformations applied to it. This is a great tool for when you come across words that you don’t recognize or find in the dictionary, because it’s likely a transformed version of a root word. However, not all transformations are captured in this tool, so it won’t always be able to help you. And some learners have expressed that they find the output confusing to interpret.

Chamorro Books & Stories

KPV Collection
This website contains a huge collection of written resources, including many children’s stories, textbooks, and other short books written entirely in Chamorro.

Chamorro Books and Stories – University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Hawaii at Manoa has an open-access collection of materials through their Pacific Area Language Materials collection, which includes about 40-50 children’s books and textbooks written in Chamorro. If you physically visit the library, you can also request a guest account to view and scan any of the physical items in their library.

University of Guam Digital Archives and Exhibitions
This is a digital repository from the University of Guam that includes hundreds of children’s books written in Chamorro, under the YMLG CHamoru Language Collection . All books are available for free download and use for educational purposes.

Chamorro Religious Texts

There are several religious texts that are written in Chamorro. They are some of the longest-form written Chamorro we have today and are critical resources for learning more advanced Chamorro. Here are links to the texts available freely online:

Books by Påle Roman de Vera
Påle’ Roman de Vera has translated many religious books into Chamorro. These books are great for exposure to advanced grammar in the Chamorro language. You can access the books online, for free through the Capuchin Digital Library at the links below:

Istoria Sagrada
I Patgon Ni Siete Sakanña
Nobenan La Purisima
Catesismon i dottrina cristiana
I Pilan Santa Maria
Nobenan Konsolasion
San Fransiskon Asis
Siete na dameñggon San Jose
I Santo Biatiko yan i siete na finiho
Nobenan Santa Teresitan
Nobenan i matuna as San Roke
Nobenan animas yan i Santos Kiluus
Manmauleg na pinagat
Mangadada, na inepen i katôliko nu i protestante
Lalai-Hulo, Antiho
Kantan gumayuus siha
Kanta siha para i gimayuus
I mauleg na tataitai
Debosionario inetnon tinaitai yan tinayuyut siha para i Islas Marianas

Sunday Readings in Chamorro
This is the North Star church bulletin out of the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa, and they publish the Sunday readings in Chamorro every week. This is a great resource for people who are wanting more texts from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) written in Chamorro.

The Order of the Mass in Chamorro
This is the order of the mass in the Chamorro language, with an English translation, found on the website for the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Santa Rita, Guam.

Baháʼí Prayers in Chamorro
Collection of prayers from the Baháʼí Faith in Chamorro, available in a nicely formatted 62-page PDF.

Book of Mormon in Chamorro
This is selections of the Book of Mormon translated into Chamorro. You can access this online, or even request a physical book to be mailed to you.

Chamoru Rosary Prayers
A collection of prayers in Chamorro. I find this page helpful because it breaks down the different parts of the prayers from Chamorro into English.

Music Resources

YouTube Chamorro Music Playlists
There is a wealth of Chamorro music available online to listen to. If you just search for “Chamorro Music” you are sure to get some songs. But to get you started, here are links to some playlists YouTube channels that focus on Chamorro music:

Chamorro Music Playlists

Old Chamorro songs
Playlist Lengguahi-ta (a playlist of the songs on this blog)

Chamorro Music YouTube Channels

Kamalen Music
A fantastic free resource of sheet music for Chamoru hymns. For those of you who are musically inclined, this can be a great way to use music for learning Chamoru. And for some audio to go with this sheet music, check out the audio recordings from the Lepblon Kånta by the Nobena Ladies on SoundCloud.

Guitar Chords for Chamorro Music
This is a collection of guitar chords for some popular Chamorro songs, transcribed by user MalatiBalati on ultimate-guitar.com and perfect for those who are musically inclined.

Audio Resources

Marianas Agupa Talkshow
This is a talkshow done in Chamoru, with episodes that are around 2 hours long. A fantastic resource for getting more listening comprehension practice and audio immersion.

Marianas Agupa: Cultural Talk Show
The Marianas Agupa Talk Show did a series of interviews, in Chamorro, with different cultural practitioners. This is an amazing talkshow series for learning more about Chamorro history and culture from our elders.

Oral History Project: CNMI Archives
Here’s an archive of recordings from an oral history project done in the CNMI. This is an amazing resource for listening to native speakers, and some of the recordings also include transcripts in Chamorro, or both Chamorro and the English translation.

Chachalåni Project
A language project to document the Chamorro language as it is spoken on Guam. This website includes audio clips of interviews with speakers and interview transcriptions.

Ekungok i Estoriå-ta
A collection of narratives and songs in Chamorro about historical sites on Guåhan. Each narrative as a PDF transcript and song lyrics. Great for listening comprehension practice, especially for beginners.

Chamorro Bible
This includes audio files of portions of the Bible read in Chamoru, which are great for listening practice. Also includes text available for download. But note that these files are in the older spelling orthography.

Paleric Youtube Channel
This is such a fantastic Youtube channel, with hundreds of videos that have Chamoru songs (with the lyrics!), videos of Påle’ Eric reading or speaking Chamoru, and then conversations with native speakers. Some of the videos with native speakers even have the transcripts in Chamoru! I love using this channel for training my ear in the language.

KUAM: Chamoru News Update
Here is a link to a playlist with news segments from KUAM spoken entirely in Chamoru. Segments are a few minutes each, and there are at least two hundred videos. So it’s great for listening practice with a ton of variety.

Jesus Film in Chamorro
This is the Jesus Film, dubbed in Chamorro. It’s 2 hours long, so it’s really helpful for listening practice. You can also download the entire film, which is great for listening or watching on the go if you don’t have an internet connection.

Isla 63 Radio Station
Isla 63 is a broadcast radio station in Hagåtña, Guam, providing Chamorro music and Talk radio shows. Follow this link to listen live. You can also find this radio station on apps such as TuneIn

CHamoru Devotions
A YouTube channel dedicated to the Holy Rosary in Chamoru, which includes text with the audio.

Siñora Mesa YouTube Channel
This channel is fabulous for learners – especially beginners – who need to practice their listening. Siñora Mesa speaks in Chamoru, and speaks slowly and clearly which is helpful for learning. Her content is also very fun and enjoyable.

Chamoru Vlog: Siñot Cody Lizama
This is a vlog entirely in Chamoru! One thing I really like about this vlog is that there are subtitles given in Chamoru, which is helpful for training the ear in the language.

Audiobooks from UOG Press
You can find audio files of several children’s books and the entire Chamoru text of Lihenden Chamoru on the Soundcloud page for UOG Press.

Chamoru Vlog: Peter Santos
Another vlog entirely in Chamoru! This one does not include Chamoru subtitles, but the vlogging style includes a lot of visual cues which really helps strengthen my listening skills.

Hongga Mo’na Project
In this oral history project, elders were interviewed in Chamoru to share their experiences during the Japanese Occupation of World War II. The main website is down, but the interviews are still available on YouTube. I also have some of the Chamoru transcripts on my downloads page. Additionally, I have these transcripts formatted for the Kindle, available from my dropbox.