Chamorro is an Austronesian language spoken by 45,000 people in the unincorporated U.S. territory of Guam and the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Though a living language today, it is clearly endangered. It is also at a critical moment in its history, when improved documentation and heightened community awareness of language endangerment could make a real difference to its survival. With support from the National Science Foundation, one linguist and one Chamorro educator will work with community members to radically upgrade the documentation of the Chamorro language.
Dr. Sandra Chung, a linguist, will write a comprehensive reference grammar of Chamorro intended for Chamorro speakers, linguists, and language learners. Dr. Elizabeth Rechebei, an educator, will oversee a working group of community members who will revise, correct, and expand the 1975 Chamorro-English Dictionary. The oral histories of fluent Chamorro speakers will be videotaped, providing a record of connected Chamorro discourse that is rich in cultural information. The resulting materials will provide a detailed record of the Chamorro language that can be used by the community and by linguists. They will serve as the foundation for the next generation of Chamorro bilingual education materials, and help increase the proportion of Chamorros who are fluent and literate in their own language. In the best case, they will have a positive impact on the language's survival.
