Lesson 32: My, Yours, Hers – Introduction to Possessive Pronouns in Chamorro

In this post, we will start using possessive pronouns in Chamorro. Using possessive pronouns in Chamorro requires some changes to how we pronounce the words we attach them to, and this post will focus on seeing, hearing and practicing these sound shifts. In my experience, many texts gloss over the pecularities of the sound changes that occur with possessive pronouns. So in this post I try to provide many examples, grouped by sound pattern, to give us a systematic overview of the most common sound changes. This post includes practice drills in Chamorro with Chamorro audio, and English translations for all the drills. Happy studying!

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Lesson 03: Describing Others in Chamorro – “The woman is tall”

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 tall. 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, example sentences, Chamorro audio pronunciations, and a Quizlet Deck to help you practice. Happy studying!

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