Chamorro Grammar

Chamorro grammar and Chamorro language course in German, Chamorro-German-Chamorro dictionary

Imperial Germany reigned over the Northern Marianas only for a relatively short period of time (1899‒1914/20). Nevertheless, the German governor ("Bezirksamtmann") Georg Fritz who was in office only until 1910 produced a grammatical sketch of Chamorro in 1903 (a text which was also meant for teach-yourself instruction of the language for native speakers of German) and a Chamorro-German-Chamorro dictionary in 1904 (both texts were republished in one volume in 1908). Fritz's adversary, the missionary Father Lopinot, followed suit with a dictionary and a grammatical sketch of his in 1910. In 1940, over twenty years after the collapse of the German colonial regime, Hermann Costenoble published the most comprehensive grammar of Chamorro to-date ‒ in German.

Thus, there is a tradition of German contributions to the description of Chamorro. However, these early works partly suffer from serious shortcomings and are also outdated in terminology, methodology, theory and style of presentation. A German user of these sources might easily get a false impression of what modern Chamorro is like. For students who have been trained in modern linguistics, the above texts give the impression of clumsiness and awkwardness to the extent that they can be understood at all.

That is why we are planning to write a new grammar of Chamorro in German ‒ a grammar that is up to the standards of contemporary linguistics. However, the grammar is also meant as a reference work for those speakers of German who want to learn Chamorro. It goes without saying that a new dictionary is also called for (the old ones used different individual orthographies which never came to be used generally). Since one of the ideas of CHIN is to establish Chamorro as an academic discipline also in Germany among other countries, there will be a need not only for the grammar and the dictionary but also for a practical language course ‒ especially because none of the older sources is fit for being used in practical language classes.

Moreover, we are pondering the idea to turn this project into a German-Spanish-Guam/Marianas cooperation such that the grammar, dictionary and language course can be realised each in Spanish and German either separately for each language or together in a German-Spanish volume.

For more information contact stolz@uni-bremen.de