Håfa Adai! 👋🏽

Welcome to the Fino' Chamoru Research Study Homepage

Online Survey Assessment 📝

Help us understand the evolution and current state of Fino’ Chamoru. Participate in our language research study by taking our online survey to help advance language research data!

Take the Online Survey

Join the Focus Group 🎙️

Be a part of the conversation! Participate in our language research study by joining our focus groups. Sessions will be held physically in-person at a common gathering point (cafe or public gathering space) on the island of Guam every weekend or best suitable time. Off island participants may request to join our virtual focus groups via video call.

Limited slots available!

Ask to Join!

Frequently Asked Questions

We are conducting a study to assess the understanding and use of various grammatical features among Fino' Chamoru speakers ranging from second language learners, beginner, intermediate and fluent/native speakers.

You will be presented with a series of elicitation questions that ask you to select the most appropriate answer based on different sentence structures written in a variety of grammatical styles. You will choose the answer that you find most familiar or "correct" based on your understanding or interpretation, alternating between English or Fino' Chamoru.

*NOTE: The spelling of words in Fino' Chamoru will mainly follow the orthography of Guam's Chamorro Language Commission: Kumisión I Fino' CHamoru

Participation will involve discussions ranging from a multitude of facets regarding Fino' Chamoru. In addition to the discussions, language ellicitation tasks will be part of the participation criteria to hone in to the data needed for this research study.

Focus group sessions are estimated to be between 30 minutes to an hour per meeting. All data collected will be kept confidential. Go to the Contact Page on the top right and fill in your contact information to express your interest in joining the focus group or send an email directly to: info-contact@katupat.laguas.com

Principal Investigator: Elvin Quitugua

IRB Study No. IRB-24-129: "Ina'guyon Fino' CHamoru: Language Feature Loss, Trends, Mutations & Transformation Research Study"

Program: CHamoru Language and Culture Researcher Training Program

Organization: Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, Micronesia Area Research Center (MARC)

Institutional Affiliation: University of Guam