Tag: Chamorro Location Words

How to Say “Here” and “There” in Chamorro

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: IntermediateLeave a comment

When we talk about places in Chamorro, words like here and there work a little differently than they do in English. Chamorro location words are more precise—they don’t just tell you where something is, but also give clues about how far away it is and whether there’s movement involved to or from a place. In this lesson, we’ll do a light introduction to the different Chamorro words for “here” and “there” as a foundation for future lessons.

This post includes lesson notes in everyday language, Chamorro audio pronunciations by Jay Che’le, and interactive study tools to help you learn these new words. Happy studying!

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How to Say “Bring It On Your Way Here” in Chamorro – Advanced Use of Chamorro Location Words

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: IntermediateLeave a comment

Chamorro has general words for “here” and “there”, and we typically use them to describe where someone or something is located or headed. But we can also use these words to express doing an action on the way to a place, such as “Bring the medicine on your way here” or “Bring the fruit on your way to the party.” This is another pattern that adds subtle complexity in how we express ourselves in everyday conversation. In this post, we’ll start learning this pattern, but we’ll keep things simple by practicing with just two Chamorro words: “bring it on your way here” and “bring it on your way there.”

Un dångkulu na Si Yu’us ma’åse’ to our Aunty Faye Untalan for answering our questions about this language pattern, and also to our teacher Ray Barcinas for teaching us about this topic.

As always, this post includes example sentences in Chamorro, English translations, and Chamorro audio narrations by Jay Che’le. Happy studying!

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Saying “There” in Chamorro: A Guide to Using Guatu

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro Lessons: Intermediate1 Comment

In this post, we’ll start practicing with Chamorro location words—starting with guatu, which means “there, in that direction” and is useful for when we want to talk about movement or action toward a place, person, or object. In this lesson we’ll focus on 9 common ways guatu is used, starting simple and expanding out to different variations. We’ve also included 40 sentence drills to help you get comfortable with using the patterns naturally in your own speech. To get the most out of this lesson, it is helpful to have familiarity with basic action sentences.

As always, this lesson has Chamorro sentence drills, English translations and Chamorro audio voiced by Jay Che’le, so you can hear the pronunciation as you practice. Happy studying!

Continue reading “Saying “There” in Chamorro: A Guide to Using Guatu” →