Kåntan Chamoru: Uchan Uchan

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro SongsLeave a comment

Last weekend Jay led both the Praktikan Ogga’an and Praktikan Pupuengi groups because I was attending a Letterpress printing workshop. They finished reading Umépanglao, and I am sure everyone is very relieved. That story is one of the longest and most technically challenging we’ve read because most of us have never built those crab traps. Our friend Aric was the exception, as he was familiar with one of the methods from his crawdad hunting!

The letterpress workshop I attended finished by the afternoon, so I got to join our evening group as we continued through our list of Chamorro songs from Chamorro women. We ended up transcribing and translating the song “Uchan Uchan” from Maria Yatar, which has some lovely, soft folk vibes and beautiful imagery in the lyrics. For anyone struggling to find Chamorro music that you like, this song offers a different and refreshing listening experience. The words and pacing are also fairly accessible (with just a few challenging areas), making it a great song for beginners. This post includes Chamorro lyrics, an English translation and language notes for the song “Uchan Uchan” by Maria Yatar. Happy listening!

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Future Tense Shortcuts in Chamorro: A Quick Guide

On By Schyuler LujanIn Quick Reference GuidesLeave a comment

When you listen to native speakers, have you ever heard them say really small words like po or bu, but couldn’t find them in the dictionaries or grammar books? These tiny words are examples of how native speakers often shorten future markers and pronouns, blending them together to speak more quickly and naturally.

I was recently reminded of how challenging these colloquial shortcuts are for learners, when Jay and I were talking to our måli’. We can hear these shortcuts everywhere in native speech, but it’s typically only the “full” forms of future tense statements that are taught in books and classroom environments. This is why these shortcuts can be challenging for learners to recognize. In this post, we’ll unpack these common shortcuts so you can better recognize and understand them in Chamorro songs and real conversations.

If you want to skip directly to the summary table of shortcuts, click here. Otherwise, click Continue Reading to start with a brief introduction to future markers in Chamorro. Happy studying!

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Kåntan Chamoru: Hu Li’e’ Hao Neni

On By Schyuler LujanIn Chamorro SongsLeave a comment

This past weekend we gathered for our first Saturday practice groups of the year, and it was so wonderful to see everyone again after 2 months away. In our first Praktikan Pupuengi session of this year, we continued through our current song list that focuses entirely on songs from Chamorro women. Aunty Mary won the vote, and she chose Hu Li’e’ Hao Neni by Bobbie DeGracia. It’s actually a sad song where the singer talks about seeing their significant other with someone else. But the song pace is on the slower side, which makes it great for beginners. Just be attentive to how some words are contracted and blended together with other words – especially the pronouns. As always, this post includes Chamorro lyrics and an English translation for the song. Happy listening!

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2025: Un Dångkulu na Si Yu’us Ma’åse!

On By Schyuler LujanIn AnnouncementsLeave a comment

We know it has been quiet here on the blog and in our practice groups as we take time for a family loss, and we so appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding. But as 2025 comes to a close, we wanted to say Un Dångkulu Na Si Yu’us Ma’åse to all of you – our Saturday practice groups, our readers on the blog and all our supporters. It is so inspiring for us to see all the time, care and effort you put into learning the Chamorro language. We’d like to take a moment to share a mini recap of the year, along with a few shoutouts:

Blog Views: This year the blog reached over 97,000 98,000 total views, which has left us absolutely staggered! We know that learning Chamorro in adulthood can be a huge challenge, so it’s exciting to know that our passion project here on the blog might be helping you on your journey.

Virtual Tip Jar: We’d also like to extend a heartfelt Si Yu’us Ma’åse to everyone who has supported us through our Buy Me A Coffee page. Every contribution goes directly back into sustaining this blog and into the tools that help us do this work more efficiently. Please know that your support truly goes a long way, and we appreciate each and every one of you. And dångkulu na kulu to our monthly subscribers nanayanneni, Lenika Cruz, Jake, Jaynina, Ungacta, and Frankt! We are so humbled by your monthly support 💛

Saturday Practice Groups: A large chunk of what we do here is inspired by our Saturday practice groups. The content on the blog and our own learning would not be the same without these spaces or the people who show up for them. Many of us have been gathering in these spaces for years, and a few of us have been together since the beginning. In agradesi hamyu ✨

Lessons and Notes: In 2025, I experimented more with learning directly from the language itself—by observing patterns—rather than relying so heavily on grammar texts, as I had in the past. This shift has made learning Chamorro feel more natural and it has significantly broadened how and what I learn. As a result, the lessons on this blog are subtly evolving to reflect this new approach and I’m really excited about all the new content ahead😊

2026: As a look ahead, Jay and I plan to focus more intentionally on our lesson content, with the goal of finally completing our beginner series. We also recognize that learning works best when it’s interactive, so we’ll be exploring ways to build in more engagement—using thoughtful learning design while keeping our approach sustainable and scalable. And in the background I’ll be ramping up my transcription and data collection efforts. Other than that, it will be work as usual on the blog and in our practice groups 🙂

Un dångkulu na Si Yu’us Ma’åse everyone! And here’s to another year ahead of learning and using the Chamorro language😊. Remember to be kind to yourself, patient on your journey, and to keep going. We got this!

Searching for Crabs

On By jay.cheleIn Chamorro StoriesLeave a comment

The next story for our Saturday practice group is about a father and son, providing a warm narrative that frames the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. This will be one of the longer pieces that we’ve used for our group, and for good reason: we get to see both a small slice of the life led by the father-son pair as well as several sets of instructions that detail the fabrication and use of various types of traps and other implements for gathering crabs under different conditions. And on a more personal note, our friend Dabit will be facilitating several Saturday practice sessions in our stead while we take some time for a loss in our family.

As ever, in this post you’ll find the Chamorro text, an English translation, and an audio narration by Jay Che’le. Footnotes to follow. Happy reading!

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