Chamorro
Language · official in 3 countries and territories
Guam spells it CHamoru and the Northern Mariana Islands spell it Chamorro, each under its own official standard. The language of the Chamorro people of the Mariana Islands is Austronesian but neither Micronesian nor Polynesian, and three centuries of Spanish rule left a large share of its vocabulary Spanish.
The language on record
- Own name
- Chamorru
- ISO 639-1
- CH
- ISO 639-3
- CHA
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- Malayo-Polynesian
- Official in
- 3 countries
Where Chamorro is official
Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, both United States territories, give Chamorro co-official status with English. The United States appears on the list because the record carries its territories' languages.
Official beside Chamorro
About Chamorro
Where Chamorro sits in the Austronesian family
Unlike its neighbours, it is not classed as Micronesian or Polynesian. Like Palauan, it may form an independent branch of Malayo-Polynesian. Sound changes set it apart from the parent language: Proto-Malayo-Polynesian qaləjaw became atdaw, sun, and enem became gunum, six.
How much of it is Spanish
Spain colonised the Marianas from 1668, and by the end of Spanish rule on Guam some thought Chamorro a semi-creole. Donald M. Topping, in his Chamorro Reference Grammar, judged the borrowing superficial: Spanish words were bent to Chamorro sounds, and the grammar was left almost untouched. Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga instead calls modern Chamorro a mixed Hispanic-Austronesian language and estimates that about 50% of its lexicon comes from Spanish, including articles, prepositions, numerals and conjunctions. Japanese added words too, mostly for manufactured goods.
What drove the decline on Guam
About 75% of Guam's population is estimated to have been literate in Chamorro when the United States took the island in 1898. The US government banned the language in schools and workplaces in 1922 and destroyed Chamorro dictionaries, Japan did likewise in the Second World War, and post-war schools kept a "no Chamorro" rule. The 2000 census found fewer than 20% of Chamorros on Guam fluent, most of them over 55. In the Northern Marianas younger people still speak it, though many use English with their children, and speakers on each side regard the other's Chamorro as broken or archaic.
Which efforts aim to revive it
Public Law 31-45, taking effect in 2013, extended Chamorro teaching in Guam's schools to grades 7 to 10. Huråo Guåhan Academy in Hagåtña, a non-profit founded in June 2005, runs immersion classes, and a smartphone app, a YouTube soap opera called Siha and the children's show Nihi! Kids carry the language to screens. In 2021 Guam's CHamoru Language Commission issued the Utgrafihan CHamoru spelling standard; the Northern Marianas had revised theirs in 2010.
Common questions
Questions about Chamorro
Is Chamorro a Spanish creole?
It was once thought to be a semi-creole. Topping held that Spanish touched only its vocabulary, while Rodríguez-Ponga sees a mixed language with Spanish elements deep in its grammar. It is classified as Austronesian.
Why is it spelled CHamoru on Guam?
Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands keep separate spelling standards. Guam's commission issued the Utgrafihan CHamoru in 2021; the Northern Marianas revised their own in 2010.
What is the word order of Chamorro?
Verb, subject, object by default, though the order is flexible.
How does Chamorro mark stress?
Stress falls on the next to last syllable by default. Where it falls elsewhere, writers may mark it with an acute accent, as in asút, blue. Unstressed vowels shrink to three sounds even when spelled a, e or o, which makes spelling and speech drift apart.