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!