PETER Onedera taught the Chamorro language for many years. In that time he taught hundreds, perhaps thousands of students the fundamentals of speaking, reading and writing Chamorro. This was just one of the titufong’onna ways in which he has been a champion for the language. One of the most visible ways he continues this task is through his column for the Pacific Daily News “Chetta’ Galaide,” which stands out amongst the media across Guam as it is entirely written in Chamorro dealing with important contemporary issues.

In one of his columns he lamented the fact that although he had taught so many students, so few had worked to become fluent. In the classroom so many were excited to be getting in touch with their language and culture, and eagerly swore they would become fluent and help keep the language from dying. Once they left Chamorro class, however, they often forgot their short-lived, fiery vow. All in all, Onedera wrote that he could only recall two students, out of so many, who stayed committed to learning the language and became fluent enough to read it, write it and converse regularly in it.

I took Chamorro classes with Onedera as an undergraduate at UOG and I recall the euphoric feeling of the English-only veil of the island being pulled away. I grew up speaking only English and knew very little Chamorro. When I would go with my grandfather to the barber shop or follow grandma around a funeral, it would be like I was walking in a foreign country, as I became engulfed in a language that was not my own. As I learned more and more in classes, I began to see the world very differently. For so many other students, they felt similar stirrings, as if certain shattered and scattered pieces of their heritage were slowly forming back together in a way that made more sense.

Estaba sin kulotitano’, laopa’go. ... So much of the world had been without color before. Huge parts of the island, parts of conversations, parts of my own family that had been blank, empty, desolate places. I had never learned Chamorro and so I couldn’t even fathom what I was missing. But now those once void-of-life places started to brim with life. They glowed with the potential for understanding. At first I could only pick out small parts of my grandparents’ conversations, eventually I could understand all of it, and at last after a year of trying I could join them. The “Juan Malimanga” comic strip in the Pacific Daily News had always been incomprehensible to me. I didn’t even glance at it when I would read through the comic pages. But once I began to learn Chamorro, my eyes were constantly drawn to it. The words started to glow with life, and when I translated and understood a strip for the first time, it felt as if I had solved The Da Vinci Code.

Learning the language infused me with a new identity, with new energy and with a new purpose. It also depressed me. When I would meet others with whom I had taken Chamorro classes and attempt to start a conversation in Chamorro, most admitted to having already forgotten a lot of what they learned. The classroom created its own microcosm of learning and identity building, but once you got your grade and left it, the passion that you once felt seemed small and pointless again, and so you let it slip away. Chamorro in the classroom felt like it was so important and crucial. It was almost as if the lessons gave you an important mission in life. That if you could just learn the language and keep using it, you would be helping to save something that has been here for thousands of years. Outside of the classroom the language returns to something of minimal value, something where we just need a few words here and there to say to tourists, but little beyond that.

In the years since I learned to speak Chamorro I’ve done my best to help teach and promote the language. One of the main ways that I’ve accomplished this is through the offering of free Chamorro language classes to anyone who is interested in learning. Since 2010 I’ve had groups of language learners meeting with me, sometimes in groups as small as two, sometimes in groups as large as 10. We go over grammatical lessons and then we practice using weekly vocabulary lists.

This Friday I’ll be starting the next round of Chamorro language classes for the Fall. We’ll be meeting every Friday, starting Aug. 17 at noon, at Java Junction in the Agana Shopping Center. They are open to anyone, Chamorros and non-Chamorros. The classes are open to any level of fluency, but these lessons will be starting at the beginner level.