Chamoru

Chamorro is the Austronesian language of the Chamorro people, indigenous to the Mariana Islands. Outside the Oceanic group, it probably forms its own Malayo-Polynesian branch. The Chamorros descend from migrants from the Philippines who reached the Marianas around 1500 to 1400 before Christ, the first human settlement in Remote Oceania. Their pre-contact society was ordered into matrilineal clans and four ranks, and built houses on megalithic latte pillars.

Magellan sighted Guam in 1521 and Miguel Lopez de Legazpi claimed the islands for Spain in 1565; the islands served Manila galleons until 1815. A Jesuit mission under Diego Luis de San Vitores arrived in 1668, bringing the Latin alphabet and Catholic faith.

The Spanish-Chamorro Wars and the 1688 smallpox epidemic shattered the old society. Chamorro absorbed Spanish vocabulary, turning paleo-Chamorro into neo-Chamorro, used when whalers began calling at Guam in 1823.