The fight to save CHamoru, a language the US military tried to destroy
Residents of the Mariana Islands are pushing to revive their indigenous language amid fears it might soon die out
Bertilia Yamasta moves a pointer across letters of the alphabet decorating the wall of her classroom. She’s standing before more than a dozen kindergarten students dressed in green-collared shirts who squirm on the carpet as she leads them in familiar recitations.
“A, å, b, ch, d,” the group says, calling out the alphabet backwards and forwards.The students are speaking in CHamoru, the indigenous language of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. And they’re among a shrinking number of people in the Marianas who actually know their ancestral
