Who first discovered Guam?
Spanish ships visited the islands in the 16th century; the first written record of contact with the islands came with the sighting of Pukapuka by Spanish sailor Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira in 1595 who called it San Bernardo (Saint Bernard).
How was Guam got its name?
How Guam Got It's Name Long ago, Sailors from Spain came to Guam in big ships. The Chamorros sailed out to sell them fruit, "Guahan!" the Chamorros called. (Guahan is a word that means "I have" in Chamorro.) This word sounded like "Guam" to the sailors. That's what the sailors called the island.
How did Guam become a part of US?
The United States took control of Guam after the Spanish American War in 1898 as party of the Treaty of Paris. Although the the Japanese occupied the island during the Second World War, it was recaptured by the US in 1944 and has remained a US territory ever since.
What is Guam known for?
Subsequently, one may also ask, what is Guam best known for? Located in the Western Pacific in the geographic region known as Micronesia, Guam is well known for its strategic military and economic position between Asia and the North American continent, but is less known for its remarkable history and resilient people.
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Who did Guam belong to before the US?
When the Spanish-American War broke out in April of 1898, Guam was under Spanish control (as it had been since the 1600s). The U.S. was actually more interested in conquering the Spanish Philippines, but it figured it needed to take Guam to secure the larger territory.
Where did people of Guam originate from?
Southeast AsiaPeople arriving from islands off Southeast Asia, most likely Taiwan, settled Guam and the Marianas more than 4,000 years ago. One could sail west-to-east from the Philippines to the Marianas just by following the sun.
Are Guam people Filipino?
People. Native Guamanians, ethnically called Chamorros, are of basically Malayo-Indonesian descent with a considerable admixture of Spanish, Filipino, Mexican, and other European and Asian ancestries. Chamorros and other Micronesians constitute about half the population.
Are people from Guam Hawaiian?
No. Guam is about 3,950 miles from Hawaii and on the other side of the international date line. The islands are situated in different regions of the Pacific, with Hawaii in Polynesia and Guam in Micronesia. The ethnicities of the native people of Guam and Hawaii differ in accordance with their geographical locations.
What race are Guam people?
Guam's population is multi-ethnic/multi-racial. Chamorros comprise the largest ethnic group, accounting for 37.2% of the total population. Filipinos make up 26.3%, Whites make up 6.8%, and Other Pacific Islanders comprise 11.5%. The ethnic/racial composition of Guam's population has been shifting over time.
Who were the original people of Guam?
Chamorros are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands of which Guam is the largest and southernmost on an island chain. Archeological evidence identified civilization dating back 5,000 years.
What race is Filipino mixed with?
What is 'Filipino'? We are proud of our heritage at the rim of East Asia, the meeting point of the many Asian groups, as well as Europeans from Spain. Our culture even 100 years ago was already a mix —of Malay, Chinese, Hindu, Arab, Polynesian and Spanish, with maybe some English, Japanese and African thrown in.
Where are Filipinos from originally?
PhilippinesPhilippines. the Philippines collectively are called Filipinos. The ancestors of the vast majority of the population were of Malay descent and came from the Southeast Asian mainland as well as from what is now Indonesia.
What are people from Guam mixed with?
Native Chamorros, descend primarily from Austronesian peoples and may also have other ancestries, such as Spanish, Mexican, Filipino, or Japanese. Chamorros and other Micronesians constitute about half the current population of Guam.
Are you American if you are born in Guam?
With very few exceptions, most of which have to do with children born to foreign government officials on assignment to the U.S., a person born in any of the fifty states, Guam, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands is an American Citizen at birth, under the principle of jus soli, regardless of the nationality of his/her ...
Are Guam natives US citizens?
Section 301(a) INA provides that a person born in and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States shall be a U.S. citizen. Section 307(b) INA conferred U.S. citizenship upon anyone born in Guam after April 11, 1899.
Are people from Guam Chinese?
As of 2022, Guam's population is 168,801....Guam.Guam GuåhanCapitalHagåtñaLargest cityDededoOfficial languagesEnglish ChamorroEthnic groups (2010)49.3% Pacific Islander 36.6% Asian 9.4% Multiracial 7.1% White 0.6% Other41 more rows
Are people from Guam Chinese?
As of 2022, Guam's population is 168,801....Guam.Guam GuåhanCapitalHagåtñaLargest cityDededoOfficial languagesEnglish ChamorroEthnic groups (2010)49.3% Pacific Islander 36.6% Asian 9.4% Multiracial 7.1% White 0.6% Other41 more rows
Is Guam African?
Where is Guam Located? Guam is located in the Australia & Oceania Continent, in the western Pacific Ocean, nearly 3,300 miles west of Hawaii. Guam map also clearly depicts that it is an island territory over which the United States has exclusive sovereignty.
What is the Guam motto?
military, for which Guam is a major strategic asset. An unofficial but frequently used territorial motto is "Where America's Day Begins", which refers to the island's proximity to the International Date Line.
How high is Mount Lamlam?
Guam's highest point is Mount Lamlam at 1,334 feet (407 meters) above sea level. If its base is considered to be nearby Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the Oceans, Mount Lamlam is the world's highest mountain at 37,820 feet (11,530 m). Politically, Guam is divided into 19 villages.
What is the capital of Guam?
Guam's capital is Hagåtña, and the most populous village is Dededo . People born in Guam are American citizens by birth. Indigenous Guamanians are the Chamoru, historically known as the Chamorro, who are related to the Austronesian peoples of Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
What is the name of the territory of the United States?
Guam. This article is about the U.S. territory. For the international organization, see GUAM. / 13.500°N 144.800°E / 13.500; 144.800. Guam ( / ˈɡwɑːm / ( listen); Chamorro: Guåhan [ˈɡʷɑhɑn]) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean.
When was the Guam wet season?
The wet season runs from July through November with an average annual rainfall between 1981 and 2010 of around 98 inches or 2,490 millimeters. The wettest month on record at Guam Airport has been August 1997 with 38.49 inches (977.6 mm) and the driest was February 2015 with 0.15 inches (3.8 mm).
How did the Asian financial crisis affect Guam?
The 1997 Asian financial crisis, which hit Japan particularly hard, severely affected Guam's tourism industry. Military cutbacks in the 1990s also disrupted the island's economy. Economic recovery was further hampered by devastation from Supertyphoons Paka in 1997 and Pongsona in 2002, as well as the effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks on tourism.
How big is Guam?
It is 30 miles (50 kilometers) long and 4 to 12 miles (6 to 19 kilometers) wide, giving it an area of 212 square miles (549 square kilometers) (three-fourths the size of Singapore) and making it the 32nd largest island of the United States. It is the southernmost and largest island in the Mariana Island archipelago, as well as the largest in Micronesia. Guam's Point Udall is the westernpoint point of the U.S., as measured from the geographic center of the United States.
Why did the Manila Galleon stop in Guam?
For example for 150 years, starting in 1575, the Manila Galleon stopped annually in Guam for reprovisioning on its trips across the Pacific between Mexico and the Philippines, bringing with it not only commercial products for sale or barter, but Filipinos speaking a number of different languages, terms from which inevitably found their way into the vocabularies of the local CHamorus. The Spanish, in order to reinforce their own troops from Mexico, even recruited a company of Kapampangan-speaking soldiers from the Philippines, many of whom married local CHamoru women and introduced words from their language into CHamoru.
How difficult is it to determine the position of Chamoru relative to other languages?
The difficulty in determining the position of CHamoru relative to other Austronesian languages is at least partly the result of the complex history of contact with other languages, both Austronesian and non-Austronesian, which has taken place at an ever-increasing rate over the last 3,500 years or more since the islands were first settled .
What are the reflexes in Chamoru?
Blust also notes that the reflexes in CHamoru of the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian directional terms “lahud” ‘towards the sea’ (in Saipan and Rota lagu ‘west’, in Guam ‘north’) and “daya” ‘towards the mountains’ (in Saipan and Rota haya ‘east’, in Guam ‘south’), imply that initial settlement in Saipan was from the west, while that in Guam was from the north.
Which language is considered a subgroup of Austronesian languages?
The second claim has been argued by Erik Zobel, who attempts to relate both Palauan and CHamoru to a subgroup of Austronesian languages that he labels Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian, and which he claims consists of a number of the languages of Indonesia, mainland Southeast Asia, and the Oceanic languages, but which explicitly excludes the languages of the Philippines, northern Sulawesi and most of the languages of Borneo and Madagascar.
Where did the Philippines migrate to?
This is consistent with an initial migration from the Philippines into Saipan, with subsequent migration south into Guam. That the migration was probably from the northern or central Philippines, rather than from the south is supported by the presence of a reflex of PMP “baRiuh” ‘typhoon’ in CHamoru pakyo ‘typhoon, storm, tropical cyclone’, since typhoons although a regular occurrence in Luzon and the central Philippines, are virtually unknown in Mindanao and areas south of the Philippines, excluding Sulawesi and Palau as possible places of origin.
Where did the language of Chamoru originate?
Austronesian is the family of languages that first developed in Taiwan some 5,000 years ago, and spread from there through the Philippines, to Indonesia and Malaysia, and ultimately into all the habitable islands of the Pacific, with some groups settling in mainland Southeast Asia and as far east as Madagascar.
Why did the Spanish recruit Kapampangan soldiers?
The Spanish, in order to reinforce their own troops from Mexico, even recruited a company of Kapampangan-speaking soldiers from the Philippines, many of whom married local CHamoru women and introduced words from their language into CHamoru.
What is the genetics of a chamoru?
An early study of CHamoru genetics in 1967 by C.C. Plato and M. Cruz, and in 1998 by J.K. Lum and R.L. Cann, demonstrated that CHamorus are distinctive in relation to neighboring Micronesian populations. The Lum and Cann study reported that more than 85 percent of the CHamorus studied belong to mtDNA haplogroups E1 and E2, which are relatively common in populations from Island Southeast Asia, but rare in other groups of Pacific islands. Most of the remaining CHamoru lineage groups belong to a unique haplogroup labeled B4a1a1a, which is common in Island Southeast Asia and Melanesia. Haplogroup B4a1a1a is also the most common group in Central and Eastern Micronesia and Polynesia, and is called the “Polynesia Motif.”
How many pairs of chromosomes are there in the human body?
In some organisms, chromosomes occur in pairs. These are called homologous chromosomes or homologues–they are not identical, but carry the same type of information. Human beings, for example, have 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes for a total of 46. Muscle cells, skin cells, nerve cells and other body cells have 46 chromosomes.
How many chromosomes are there in a mosquito?
Most species are generally characterized by having a specific number of chromosomes. For example, mosquitoes have 6, dogs have 78, an amoeba has 12, and shrimp have 254. In some organisms, chromosomes occur in pairs.
Why do chromosomes look like X?
Because of the extra copy, the chromosome looks like an “X;” each leg of the “X” is called a chromatid. When the cell divides, the chromosomes separate, with each new cell receiving an identical copy of the chromosome. The resulting daughter cells are genetically identical. Chromosomes vary in number and shape among different organisms.
Why is the standard deviation of the European and Native American components much higher than that of the NE Asian and SE Asian?
This indicates that the former are much more recent – i.e. historical instead of prehistorical – additions to CHamoru genotype. This is because, over time, the genetic information spreads through and stabilizes within a population, reducing the amount of deviation.
When were the Marianas settled?
While archeological evidence supports the idea that the Marianas may have been settled as early as 3,500 years ago by people from Island Southeast Asia (modern day Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan), there remain many questions about the genetic origins and gene flow of the CHamoru people.
How is the Y chromosome passed on?
Therefore, the “Y” chromosome is only passed on through the paternal or father’s line. When sex cells form, their genetic information can undergo changes in a process known as “crossing over.”. Here, pieces of DNA may move from one homologue to another, resulting in new variations of genetic material.
Why did Chamorro and foreigner contact increase?
As crews of more ships stopped on Guam, Chamorro and foreigner contact increased. This interacting caused a notable depopulation owed to diseases introduced from abroad.
What was the main stop for Spanish ships traveling the Acapulco-Manila route?
Guam served as a stopping point for Spanish vessels traveling the Acapulco-Manila route. Umatac Bay was a key port for ships looking to replenish their supplies and freshwater. After the stop, they continued their journey to Luzon in the Philippines.
What is the largest Mariana island?
Guam is the largest of the Mariana Islands. The ancient inhabitants of the Marianas, including Guam, were the Chamorros. They were Austronesian people from Southeast Asia, reaching the islands as seafarers. According to experts, they navigated their way using the stars, wind, and currents.
How many prehistoric migrations were there in Guam?
There was a study of Chamorro matrilineal mitochondrial DNA. According to that study, there are two main ancient lineages. The evidence indicates that there were two prehistoric migrations. Visit the Guam People page for more on Guam’s Ancient Inhabitants.
How many typhoons were there in the late 1600s?
In the late-1600s, there were three typhoons before the end of the century. Two of them killed a significant number of people living on Guam at the time. October 3, 1671 – The storm of 1671 was the first historical record of a typhoon on Guam. The eye passed over the island, with most of the homes on the island toppled.
How many people died from the Guam flu?
The epidemic died out in November. According to a count made by the Governor of Guam, it left 5,534 people dead.
Why did the population of Guam drop after the Spanish colonization?
Guam’s indigenous population experienced a significant drop after the Spanish colonized. A result of conflict with Guam’s colonizers, the introduction of diseases. Add in a couple of natural disasters, and the numbers whittled away.
How tall is Mount Lamlam?
The hills rise to an elevation of more than 1,000 feet (300 metres); their lower slopes to the east (and also, in part, to the west) are covered with younger limestones, generally similar to those of the northern limestone plateau. The island rises to 1,332 feet (406 metres) at Mount Lamlam, in the southwest. To the southeast of Mount Lamlam is another major hill, Mount Bolanos (1,240 feet [378 metres]).
What is the ethnicity of Guamanians?
Native Guamanians, ethnically called Chamorros, are of basically Malayo-Indonesian descent with a considerable admixture of Spanish, Filipino, Mexican, and other European and Asian ancestries. Chamorros and other Micronesians constitute about half the population.
What is the language of Chamorro?
The Chamorro language is an Austronesian language that has, over time, come to incorporate many Spanish words. The word Chamorro is derived from Chamorri, or Chamoli, meaning “noble.” English and Chamorro are the official languages; although Chamorro is still used in many homes, English is the language of education and commerce. Because of the number of tourists and investors from Japan, Japanese is increasingly also used.
What are the plants that live in Guam?
Palm trees, ferns, and other tropical plants abound. Many types of marine life and insects are also found. However, as a result of the accidental introduction in the 1940s of the brown tree snake, an invasive species from New Guinea, indigenous bird life on Guam has been devastated.
What is the capital of Guam?
Hagåtña (Agana) is the capital. Major settlements are Dededo, in the north-central part of the island, Machanao, in the north, and Apotgan, on the west coast. Guam Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Britannica Quiz. Islands and Archipelagos.
What is the F-22 Raptor?
F-22 Raptor. A pair of F-22 Raptors patrolling the Pacific Ocean during a deployment of the 90th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.
Why is the natural increase in the Marshall Islands so high?
The island’s rate of natural increase, although about average for the region, is high compared with that of the United States, partly because of a low death rate. There are large numbers of migrants from the Philippines and South Korea, as well as from neighbouring states such as the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
What is a latte stone?
Latte Stones are the stone pillars of ancient Chamorro houses. Found nowhere else in the world, the Latte Stone has become a symbol and the signature of Guam and the Marianas Islands. Original Latte Stones were comprised of two pieces, a supporting column (halagi), made from coral limestone topped with a capstone (tasa), made from coral heads, ...
How long did the Spanish era last?
The Spanish Era on Guam lasted for over 333 years from 1565 through 1898. The first known contact between Guam and West occurred when Ferdinand Magellan anchored his small 3-ship fleet in Umatac Bay on March 6, 1521. Hungry and weakened from their long voyage, the crew hastily prepared to go ashore and restore provisions. The excited native Chamorro’s, who did not share the Spaniards concept of ownership, canoed out first and began helping themselves to everything that was not nailed down, leading the Spaniards to label Guam “The Island of Thieves”. The weakened sailors had trouble fending off the tall and robust natives until a few shots from the Trinidad’s big guns frightened them off the ship and they retreated into the surrounding jungle. Magellan was eventually able to obtain rations and offered iron, a commodity highly prized by Neolithic peoples, in exchange for fresh fruits, vegetables and water. Details of Magellan’s visit and the first known Western documentation of Guam and the Chamorro people may be found in the journal of Antonio Pigafetta. Pigafetta was Magellan’s chronicler and one of only 18 original crew members to survive Ferdinand Magellan’s ill-fated circumnavigation of the globe.
Why is Guam important?
Guam is also important as a strategic communications hub and forward defense outpost for the Pacific and Asia. This site provides a basic outline of Guam’s unique history and culture derived from its original native inhabitants, the Chamorro who were on Guam as early as 2,000 B.C.
Why did the Spanish build forts in Guam?
The Spanish built a number of forts to protect their the Galleons and their colony on Guam. Fort Santa Ageuda, on the cliff line overlooking Hagatna and Hagatna Bay, protected the capitol from attacks from the sea. Forts Nuestra Senora de la Soledad and Fort Santo Angel protected the Umatic Bay.
Where are the latte stones found?
Today, many latte sites can be found in Northern Guam. Replicas and images of Latte Stones are common in carvings, jewelry, on t-shirts and hats and in logos. Latte Stones are respected and are untouched. A human interloper at Latte sites may encounter Taotaomona (ancestral Chamorro spirits). Eight ancient latte stones transferred from their original location in Me’pu in Guam’s Southern interior are on display in Latte Stone Park in Hagatna.
What was the purpose of Guam?
After being ceded to the United Stated by Spain in 1898, Guam remained a strategic refueling and replenishment base for American Navy and commercial vessels between the United States and America’s new colonies in the Far East. The Spanish established their capitol in Hagatna and constructed a Governor’s Palace in 1736.
What was the influence of the Catholic Church on Guam?
Influence of the Catholic Church. Dulce Nombre de Maria. Cathedral-Basilica. Once Christianity was firmly established by the Jesuits in 1898, the Catholic Church became the focal point for village activities and has continued to exert a major influence on Guam until the present.
Why were the Americans confused?
The Americans were confused because they didn’t know what was going on. Why wasn’t anyone responding to the declaration that they were there to attack?
What happened in 1917?
1917. The 1917 Bath Riots. Turns out, the Spanish stationed on the remote island hadn’t known they were two months into the Spanish-American War. Once the parties established that they were enemies, the Americans sent a letter to the Spanish governor of Guam giving him 30 minutes to surrender.
How far apart are the Philippines and Guam?
The Philippines and Guam are only 1,500 miles apart. In June of that year, the U.S. sent the second USS Charleston (C-2) to capture the island.
What did the Americans on board the Spanish ship do?
When the ship arrived, the Americans on board sent up warning signals to let the Spanish know they were there , says Dr. Diana L. Ahmad, a professor of history and political science at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
How long did the Americans stay in Guam?
Afterwards, the Americans “stayed for about 24 to 36 hours” before sailing away again, she says. “They left no Americans in charge of the island and even took the flag [they’d raised] with them.”. It was the first and last event in the Spanish-American War that ever took place in Guam, and it was completely bloodless.
How many people have no voting rights in Guam?
and the other U.S. territories—Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa—Guam’s 162,000 people have no voting representatives in Congress.
Is Guam a threat to North Korea?
Most recently, Guam has asked the U.S. to help de-escalate the threat posed by North Korea. On August 9, 2017, the people of Guam woke up to read that Kim Jong-un was considering a nuclear attack on their island.
What was the Chamorros culture?
By then, the Chamorros had developed a complex, class-based matrilineal society based on fishing and agriculture, supplemented by occasional trade visits from Caroline Islanders.
What did Magellan call the Chamorros?
Magellan's characterization of the Chamorros as "thieves, " discouraged further European intrusion; and while some ships still visited, the Chamorros lived in relative isolation for the next century or so. The nearby Philippines, where traders found an entryway to the Chinese market, attracted most of the seafarers from abroad.
How to honor Asian American history?
There are many ways to honor Asian-American and Pacific Islander history, like observing AAPI month or supporting institutions like the Smithsonian, which work to preserve personal objects from the past. From donated belongings of Japanese-American internees to poems by Asian immigrants carved on the walls of Angel Island Station, all tell a story that would otherwise be forgotten. Join MTV News correspondent Yoonj Kim and Interim Director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Lisa Sasaki on a dazzling journey through AAPI history.
Why were canoes banned in Guam?
Canoe culture was then banned to keep them from escaping.
When did the Spanish conquer Guam?
It was 500 years ago, in 1521, when Ferdinand Magellan’s ships, weary and hungry, pulled up to this island, beginning 300 years of Spanish conquest. Nowadays most Americans, if they know of Guam at all, think of this and neighboring Saipan as sites of World War II battles. It was from neighboring Tinian that the Enola Gay took off to drop ...
What was the turning point that transformed this hitherto-ignored Spanish outpost into a sub answer?
His death was the turning point that transformed this hitherto-ignored Spanish outpost into a subjugated Spanish colony.
Who were the two Guam delegates who were able to get citizenship in 1936?
As late as 1936, two Guam delegates, Baltazar J. Bordallo and Francisco B. Leon Guerrero, went to Washington to petition in person for Chamorro citizenship.
Overview
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic center of the U.S.); its capital Hagåtña (144°45'00"E) lies further west than Melbourne, Australia (144°57'47"E). In Oceania, Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands and the largest island in Micronesia. Guam's capital is Hagåtña, and the most po…
History
Guam, along with the Mariana Islands, were the first islands settled by humans in Remote Oceania. Incidentally it is also the first and the longest of the ocean-crossing voyages of the Austronesian peoples, and is separate from the later Polynesian settlement of the rest of Remote Oceania. They were first settled around 1500 to 1400 BC by migrants departing from the Philippines. This was followed by a second migration from the Caroline Islands by the first millennium AD, and a third …
Geography and environment
Guam is 30 miles (50 kilometers) long and 4 to 12 miles (6 to 19 kilometers) wide, giving it an area of 212 square miles (549 square kilometers) and making it the 32nd largest island of the United States. It is the southernmost and largest island in the Mariana Island archipelago, as well as the largest in Micronesia. Guam's Point Udall is the westernmost point of the U.S., as measured from the g…
Demographics
According to the 2010 United States Census, the largest ethnic group were the native Chamorus, accounting for 37.3% of the total population. Asians (including Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese) accounted for 33% of the total population. Other ethnic groups of Micronesia (including those of Chuukese, Palauan, and Pohnpeians) accounted for 10%; 9.4% of the population were multiracial (two or more races); and White Americans made up 7.1% of the total population. The e…
Culture
The culture of Guam is a reflection of traditional Chamoru customs in combination with American, Spanish and Mexican traditions. Post-European-contact Chamoru Guamanian culture is a combination of American, Spanish, Filipino, other Micronesian Islander and Mexican traditions. Few indigenous pre-Hispanic customs remained following Spanish contact but include plaiting and pottery, and there has been a resurgence of interest among the Chamoru to preserve the langua…
Economy
Guam's economy depends primarily on tourism, Department of Defense installations and locally owned businesses. Under the provisions of a special law by Congress, it is Guam's treasury rather than the U.S. treasury that receives the federal income taxes paid by local taxpayers (including military and civilian federal employees assigned to Guam).
Government and politics
Guam is governed by a popularly elected governor and a unicameral 15-member legislature, whose members are known as senators. Its judiciary is overseen by the Supreme Court of Guam.
The District Court of Guam is the court of United States federal jurisdiction in the territory. Guam elects one delegate to the United States House of Representati…
Transportation and communications
Most of the island has state-of-the-art mobile phone services and high-speed internet widely available through either cable or DSL. Guam was added to the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in 1997 (country code 671 became NANP area code 671), removing the barrier of high-cost international long-distance calls to the U.S. mainland.
Interpretive Essay: Linguistic Issues and Theories
Placing Chamoru Proves Difficult
- Language is one of the key sources of information that enables scholars to draw conclusions about where people came from and to whom they may be related. This information, supplemented by the modern dating techniques of archaeology, can provide us with a fairly reliable picture of prehistory, although access to new data and dating techniques often require the prehistorian to r…
Impact of Colonization
- In the historical period, colonization under Spanish, German, Japanese and American governments along with decimation of the local population have had drastic effects upon the inherited language, especially in the lexicon, but also in the forms of words and the grammar. Probably thousands of words which were once part of the language of the early migrants have b…
All Languages Change
- There are two basic assumptions upon which the principles and procedures of historical-comparative linguistics are based. The first of these is that all languages change over time. This seems a fairly obvious assumption when one compares the languages of grandparents with their grandchildren, but the cumulative results of such inter-generational change typically result in ver…
Languages Change Systematically
- The second basic assumption is that the sounds of a language change over time in regular and systematic ways, enabling linguists to establish sets of corresponding sounds between languages belonging to the same language family. Thus words in CHamoru with “f” correspond to similar words in Tagalog with “p”, while those with “p” correspond to Tagalog words with “b”. They can d…
Chamoru as An Austronesian Language
- There have been several studies which have focused on the systematic way sounds have changed in CHamoru which differentiate it from other Austronesian languages. The first of these studies was by the American philologist Charles Everett Conant, who spent many years in the Philippines at the beginning of the twentieth century. In articles published in the Journal of the A…
Subgrouping Hypotheses
- From the above it is clear that CHamoru is an Austronesian language. There are hundreds of words that probably directly reflect words that have been reconstructed to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Knowing this however doesn’t tell us who the closest relatives of CHamoru are, nor where the original CHamorus came from. Subgrouping claims There are at least four main claim…
Saipan Settled First
- Blust also notes that the reflexes in CHamoru of the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian directional terms “lahud” ‘towards the sea’ (in Saipan and Rota lagu ‘west’, in Guam ‘north’) and “daya” ‘towards the mountains’ (in Saipan and Rota haya‘east’, in Guam ‘south’), imply that initial settlement in Saipan was from the west, while that in Guam was from the north. This is consistent with an initial migra…
Knowledge of Rice Cultivation
- This does not support however the claim that the knowledge of rice agriculture was introduced as a result of language contact, nor is it possible to unambiguously locate the source of the language(s) that might have influenced CHamoru to this degree. Terms for rice, rice cultivation and preparation have been reconstructed for Proto-Austronesian and must have been known b…
For Further Reading
- Blust, Robert. “Chamorro Historical Phonology.” Oceanic Linguistics39, no. 1 (2000): 83-122. Reid, Lawrence A. “Morphosyntactic Evidence for the Position of Chamorro in the Austronesian Language Family.” In Collected Papers on Southeast Asian and Pacific Languages. Edited by Robert S. Bauer. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2002. Zobel, Erik. “The Position of Chamorro and …
Original Inhabitants
Spanish Colonization
- Spanish colonization lasted for three centuries. Roughly around the same amount of time that Spain occupied the Philippines. Colonization brought suffering and death. Guam’s indigenous population experienced a significant drop after the Spanish colonized. A result of conflict with Guam’s colonizers, the introduction of diseases. Add in a couple of natural disasters, and the nu…
American Colonization
- Spain lost the Spanish–American War in 1898. After which Spain turned Guam over to the United States. Thus, beginning the American colonial period for Guam. After the transfer of Guam to the control of the US Navy, it served as the naval station. Hence, serving the interests of American commercial and military ships. Ships that were often traveling to or from the Philippines. Anothe…
The Guamanian Era
- Guam became incorporated as part of US territory under the Guam Organic Act of 1950. Under this Act, there was a new system of government established. With an Administration, Legislature, and Courts. Guam also had its first governor appointed by the US, rather than the Navy. It was during this time when the term Guamanian became the word used to refer to native inhabitants. …
Guam Today
- Due to its unique history, Guam has served as a mixing ground for different cultures. Filipino, Japanese, Spanish and American cultures influenced the cultural characteristics of the island.