Chamorro language
| Chamorro | |
|---|---|
| Finu' Chamorro | |
| Native to | Mariana Islands |
| Ethnicity | Chamorro people |
|
Native speakers
|
(95,000 cited 1990–2010) |
|
Austronesian
|
|
| Official status | |
|
Official language in
|
 Guam Northern Mariana Islands
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ch |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | cham1312 |
 |
|
Chamorro (Chamorro: Finu' Chamorro or Chamoru) is an Austronesian language spoken by about 47,000 people (about 35,000 people on Guam and about 12,000 in the Northern Mariana Islands). It is the native and spoken language of the Chamorro people who are the indigenous people of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, US territories.
The Chamorro language is threatened, with a precipitous drop in language fluency over the past century. It is estimated that 75% of the population of Guam was literate in the Chamorro language around the time the United States captured the island during the Spanish–American War (there are no similar language fluency estimates for other areas of the Mariana Islands during this time). A century later, the 2000 U.S. Census showed that fewer than 20% of Chamorros living in Guam speak their native language fluently and a vast majority were over the age of 55.
A number of forces have contributed to the steep, post-World War II decline of Chamorro language fluency. A colonial legacy, beginning with the Spanish colonization of Guam in 1668, imposed power structures privileging the language of the region's colonizers.
In Guam, the language suffered additional suppression when the U.S. Government banned the Chamorro language in schools in 1922. They collected and burned all Chamorro dictionaries. Similar policies were undertaken by the Japanese government when they controlled the region during World War II. And post World War II, when Guam was ceded back to the United States, the American administrators of the island continued to impose “no Chamorro” language restrictions in local schools, teaching only English and disciplining students for speaking their indigenous tongue.
Even though these oppressive language policies were progressively lifted, the damage had been done. Subsequent generations were often raised in households where only the oldest family members were fluent. Lack of exposure made it increasingly difficult to pick up Chamorro as a second language. Within a few generations, English replaced Chamorro as the language of daily life.
There is a difference in the rate of Chamorro language fluency between Guam and the other Mariana Islands. On Guam (called Guåhan by Chamorro speakers, from the word guaha, meaning "have"; its English meaning is "We have" from the idea that they had everything they needed) the number of native Chamorro speakers has dwindled in the last decade or so. In the Northern Mariana Islands, young Chamorros speak the language fluently. Chamorro is common among Chamorro households in the Northern Marianas, but fluency has greatly decreased among Guamanian Chamorros during the years of American rule in favor of American English, which is commonplace throughout the inhabited Marianas.
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Wikipedia