When I first started learning Chamorro back in 2020, my teacher at the time gave me this advice: “Find a Chamorro speaker to help you.” While this seems like great advice, for many learners it is easier said than done. Not only does speakership decline make connecting with speakers increasingly difficult, we are also given little to no preparation for navigating the complex dynamics that we may encounter when we approach speakers. Therefore, it is important for us as language learners to learn how to best interact with speakers because we want to give ourselves the best chance of making it a good experience for everybody. I had to learn all of this the hard way, so in this post I am going to share some key ground rules and the 4 key do’s and don’ts that I’ve learned for interacting with Chamorro speakers.

This is a written version of what we presented for our PISACON workshop when we were talking about practicing good etiquette for interacting with speakers. You can view our original presentation slides on Canva.

Continue reading “4 Do’s and Don’ts for Learning From Chamorro Speakers” →