Chamorro Grammar
Chamorro is an agglutinative language, grammatically allowing root words to be modified by a number of affixes. For example, masanganenñaihon "talked awhile (with/to)", passive marking prefix ma-, root verb sangan, referential suffix i "to" (forced morphophonemically to change to e) with excrescent consonant n, and suffix ñaihon "a short amount of time". Thus Masanganenñaihon gue' "He/she was told (something) for a while".
Chamorro has many Spanish loanwords and other words have Spanish etymological roots (e.g. tenda "shop/store" from Spanish tienda), which may lead some to mistakenly conclude that the language is a Spanish Creole: Chamorro very much uses its loan words in a Micronesian way (e.g.: bumobola "playing ball" from bola "ball, play ball" with verbalizing infix -um- and reduplication of first syllable of root).
Chamorro is predicate-initial, head-marking language. It has a rich agreement system both in the nominal and in the verbal domains. The following table gives the possessor-noun agreement suffixes:
| Person/Number | Suffix |
|---|---|
| 1 sg | -hu / -ku |
| 2 sg | -mu |
| 3 sg | -ña |
| 1 incl du/pl | -ta |
| 1 excl du/pl | -(n)mami |
| 2 du/pl | -(n)miyu |
| 3 du/pl | -(n)ñiha |
Chamorro is also known for its wh-agreement in the verb: these agreement morphemes agree with features (roughly, the Grammatical case feature) of the question phrase, and replace the regular subject–verb agreement:
| (1) | Ha-fa'gasi | si | Juan | i | kareta. |
| 3sSA-wash | PND | Juan | the | car |
'Juan washed the car.'
| (2) | Hayi | fuma'gasi | i | kareta? |
| who? | WH. wash | the | car |
'Who washed the car?'
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“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)