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Chamorro has a large Spanish vocabulary (approx 70% of word roots), but contrary to the popular view it is not a Spanish Creole: Chamorro very much uses its loan words in a Micronesian way (eg: bumobola "playing ball" from bola "ball, play ball" with infix -um- and reduplication of root). There are approximately 50,000 speakers of Chamorro throughout the Mariana chain of islands, the majority of them concentrated on Guam.

Chamorro's nearest linguistic relatives are found in the Philippines.

1 Alphabet

' ( glottal stop), A, Å, B, Ch, D, EThe letter E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. History E is derived from the Greek letter epsilon which is much the same in appearance (Ε, ε) and function. The Semitic h probably first represented a praying or calling human figure, FThe letter F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. History F developed from the digraph FH that stood for /f/. The Etruscans were the inventors of this digraph; F on its own stood for /w/ in Etruscan as in Greek (where the letter F,called Digamma in, GG is the seventh letter in the Roman alphabet. History The letter G was created by the Romans because they felt that C was not an adequate letter to represent both /k/ and /g/. Fascinatingly, the alleged inventor is a known historical figure, Spurius Carv, HH is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. History The Semitic letter kh t) probably represented the phoneme /X/ ( pharyngeal voiceless fricative) ( IPA [h]). The form of the letter probably stood for a fence. Early Greek H stood for /h/, but later on, II is the 9th letter in the Latin alphabet. History The letter I derived from the Greek iota (Ι, ι). It stood for the vowel /i/, the same as in the Etruscan alphabet. In Latin (as in Modern Greek) /j/ (as English Y in YOKE) was added. In Semitic,, KThe eleventh letter of the Latin alphabet, K comes from the Greek Κ or κ (Kappa) developed from the Semitic Kap, symbol for an open hand. The Semitic sound value /k/ was maintained in most Classic as well as Modern Languages, although Latin ab, LL is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. History The letter L is derived ultimately from the Semitic Lamed which stood for the phonetic value l as did the Greek letter Lambda Λ (upper case) or λ (lower case), as well as the equivalent, MM is the thirteenth letter of the Latin alphabet. History The letter M represents the bilabial nasal consonant sound [m] in Classical languages as well as the modern languages. It derives its shape from the Greek Μ or μ. Semitic Mem originally pictu, N, Ñ, Ng , O, P, R, S, T, U, Y

Note that the letter Y is pronounced more like 'dz' as it is in some dialects of Castillian Spanish . Note also that A and Å are not distinguished in written Chamorro, both being written as 'A'; nor are N and Ñ distinguished. Thus the Guamanian place name Yona is pronounced 'dzo-nya', not 'yo-na' as might be expected.