ABOUT THIRTEEN YEARS AGO I moved to Utah from a little island in the Pacific called Guam. I was born in Guam, lived there until I was about five, and attended a preschool there. Moving to the States was a drastic change for me and my mom because we had never lived off the island, and we left a lot of family back home on the island as well, including my grandparents. But because they had a lot of grandkids living in Utah, they would come to visit every once in a while.

When they did come to visit they often brought back food and treats from Guam that we could not find in the States. They also would speak to each other in Chamorro, the native language on Guam, a language neither my parents nor I learned how to speak. When I was younger, I never really questioned why it was that the kids never learned the language my grandparents were speaking or really cared very much about it, but as I began to get older, I started to wish I had learned to speak Chamorro and wondered why I never got the chance to learn it. When I was younger, I never really questioned why it was that the kids never learned the language my grandparents were speaking. At times it was upsetting that the language never got passed down to my generation. For the most part, most of my parents’ generation could understand what was being said, but not speak fluently, and I could not even do that. All I know is little fragments and phrases for words like “hello” or “thank you.” Many Chamorro kids my age have a similar experience when it comes to the Chamorro language. Our grandparents’ generation did not have the opportunity to pass down the language to their children, and this has endangered the language.

The Chamorro language was changed so much and is now being used significantly less than it was in the past because it was not passed down to the younger generations of Chamorro people due to the colonization and changes in society on the island. Because the language was not passed down, it has become an endangered language which is a problem because Guam is at risk of losing a significant part of its culture. The preservation of Chamorro should be the goal for the island.

According to the Linguistic Society of America, an endangered language is one that is at risk of becoming extinct, meaning that the language will fall out of use and cease to be spoken. This means that newer generations are not learning to speak their native languages and so it will die along with the last speaker of the language. Often languages are not being passed down to the next generations of speakers because they are being overshadowed by languages that are more widely spoken, like English or Spanish. This process is happening to many languages around the world, especially to minority languages, primarily due to genocide or pressure to give up native languages. The people of Guam, known as Chamorros, were pressured to give up or change their language when different groups of people colonized the island.

Guam was colonized many times, but the first group that came to the island was the Spanish. Ferdinand Magellan arrived on the island in 1521, but it was not colonized until a Spanish priest came to the island to convert the Chamorro people to Catholicism. The Spanish military eventually took over the conversion of the Chamorro people. The Spanish brought new traditions to the Chamorro people, resulting in a loss of many of the old traditions, beliefs, and stories that the native Chamorros had before the Spanish came to the island. In addition to bringing the Spanish culture to Guam, the colonizers also brought diseases that the Chamorro people had not been exposed to prior to the Spanish coming. These diseases led to the deaths of thousands of native Chamorro people, leaving a fraction of native Chamorro speakers on the island to keep the original culture and history (Herman).

Colonization on the island impacted the culture of Guam, but it also had an immense impact on the language. According to The Smithsonian, “Today, the Chamorro language retains its traditional grammar, but 55 percent of the vocabulary borrows from Spanish” (Herman). Over half of the Chamorro language is comprised of Spanish words. Because of the Spanish colonization of Guam, Chamorro is vastly different than what it once was. The overwhelming presence of the Spanish colonizers in Guam made a great impact on the vocabulary of Chamorro, blending the two languages and ultimately changing the way Chamorro is spoken.

Chamorro was changed so much because the Spanish stayed in Guam for a long time and integrated themselves into life in Guam. However, eventually, the Spanish would surrender the colony to the United States, who took control of the island after the Spanish-American War (Little). Once the U.S. was in possession of Guam, control was given to the naval authorities. During this time, Chamorro people were not treated as citizens. They had no representatives in the government and no access to any of the judicial system (Bevacqua). In addition, General Order No. 12 was placed over the island, pertaining to the education system on the island. This order placed the U.S. government in control of the education system and introduced English into every school (Campbell). Children in school would begin to receive their education in English. General Order No. 12 was the beginning of English becoming a part of all aspects of life on Guam, and English would continuously progress on Guam until the U.S. lost the governance of the island.

Japan took over the island during World War II. Japan took a more brutal and forceful reign over the island, which would lead to the killing of a large amount of the Chamorro people (Kuper). Their tragic deaths meant fewer Chamorros to pass on the Chamorro legacies and culture. However, Japan’s rule over Guam ended early when the U.S. fought to take back the island under its rule once again.

The U.S. came back to Guam and freed the Chamorro people from World War II Japanese rule. The Chamorro people were living under significantly better conditions after the U.S. made it back to the island, however, this would mean going back to the policies the U.S. had in place before the Japanese Occupation. The education system would be run by the U.S. government with English-only policies within schools. My grandfather, Antonio Flores, was going to school during this time and experienced the English-only policies that were put in place at the time. In schools, students were taught in English and were required to speak English. As a means to enforce the rule, children were punished with fines if they were caught speaking Chamorro. Education began to move away from Chamorro, and society moved along with it.

As time went on, the American military brought more and more Americans to the island, to the point that more English speakers lived there than Chamorro speakers. So, when my grandparents’ generation was old enough to be parents themselves, they realized that English had become the language that was primarily used on the island and that it would be beneficial for their children to speak English. It was not that parents did not want to pass down the language, but English was being spoken significantly more often than Chamorro. English was beginning to be found not just in education, but in the music, entertainment, and conversation on the island. Society on the island created an environment in Guam that did not support Chamorro. This environment meant Chamorro would have to step back for English (Flores).

With Chamorro fading out of use, Chamorro culture would also take a hit. Language and culture are linked to each other. Language is a form of communication comprised of the historical and cultural background of people. Language and culture are linked to each other. Language is a form of communication comprised of the historical and cultural background of people. Language offers insights into a society’s point of view of life (Jiang 328). Through language, people experience culture through art forms such as poetry and music, expressions, humor, or conversational styles. These experiences would be vastly different if in another language (Woodbury). It connects people to those that came before them because it gives the future generation a style of communication customized and fitted to the people who spoke that language. And with every new generation that the language gets passed to, new words, phrases, and styles will be formed, which will be passed to the generation after them and the same process will happen again and again. Through language, we pass down characteristics that were unique to the people that spoke the language before us, and we form new characteristics, which will hopefully be passed on to the next generation of speakers. To lose a language means to lose all those unique factors that were put into it. Those unique factors that were put into the language are bits of the culture that they were formed. Language communicates those bits of cultural information through linguistic uniqueness. This strong connection between culture and language highlights how important it is that Chamorro is recognized as an endangered language so that changes may continue to be made to save the language from going extinct. Preserving the language will preserve the cultural connections that come with it.

It could be argued that because Chamorro is only spoken by a minority of people, it is not a useful enough language to keep around. It is true that there is only a small amount of people that are Chamorro and the language would most likely not be spoken outside of the Chamorro population, so of course it would be advantageous to know the English language. However, while English is useful for easy communication with a large number of people, it is essential to continue the use of smaller languages in order to promote linguistic and cultural diversity. Diversity in culture and language opens the door to new ideas, and linguistic diversity especially helps linguists understand the possibilities and limits, similarities and differences, and cultural information that comes along with language and how it pertains to the world developing around it. When languages are lost, it limits our abilities to obtain this vital information and closes the doors to new ideas that can come from different ways of thinking and communicating (Woodbury). By supporting the preservation of Chamorro, it also promotes this need for diversity by keeping another language alive.

In order to support the preservation of Chamorro, changes need to be made. Children learn languages easiest when they are young so in many cases it is beneficial to start teaching children a second language, in this case, Chamorro, while they are starting or about to start school and allowing them to continue to practice. So of course, it is important that Chamorro be integrated into the school system to begin teaching kids how to speak their language, but that should not be the only place Chamorro is used. Chamorro should also be used in the home and throughout the community, workplace and businesses, and everyday life in general in order for the language to be revived successfully (Salas). Guam needs to start encouraging the use of the Chamorro language in all aspects of Chamorro people’s lives.

The Chamorro language is a vital part of Chamorro culture, and to let the language become extinct means losing a huge and integral part of Chamorro culture. Guam has been through so many hardships and losses throughout its history. It would be a tragedy for Chamorro culture to take another loss when there is still a possibility that it can be saved.

Works Cited

Bevacqua, Michael Lujan. “American-Style Colonialism.” Guampedia, 11 Oct. 2019, https://www.guampedia.com/american-style-colonialism/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.

Campbell, Bruce L. “General Order No. 12.” Guampedia, 10 Oct. 2019, https://www.guampedia.com/us-naval-era-general-order-no-12/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.

Flores, Antonio. Personal Interview. 15 Nov. 2019.

Herman, Doug. “A Brief, 500-Year History of Guam.” The Smithsonian, 15 Aug. 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/brief-500-year-history-guam-180964508/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.

Jiang, Wenying. “The Relationship Between Culture and Language.” ELT Journal, vol. 54, No. 1, 2000, p. 328.

Kuper, Kenneth. Na’La’La’ I Hila’ta, Na’matatnga i Taotao-ta: Chamorro Language as Liberation from Colonization. Diss. University of Hawai’i, May 2014.

Little, Becky. “How the United States Ended Up with Guam.” History, 30 Aug. 2018, https://www.history.com/news/how-the-united-states-ended-up-with-guam. Accessed 4 Dec. 2019.

Salas, Marilyn. “Language Maintenance: In the Case of Guam.” Directions: Journal of Educational Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 2005, pg. 116-117.

Woodbury, Anthony C. “What is an Endangered Language.” Linguistic Society of America, https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-endangered-language. Accessed 3 Dec. 2019.