by Mindy Aguon

Guam - The older a person is, the stronger their Chamorro language skills. Such was one of the major findings of a Chamorro Language Assessment Survey project. Pa'a Taotao Tano' class project director Nicole Calvo says the goal is to protect, perpetuate and preserve the Chamorro culture.

Pa'a Taotao Tano' received a $98,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct the survey. It also found that Chamorro is used more at family and social events, and that four out of five Chamorros say they interact with a fluent speaker every day. "At Pa'a we plan to do something with this data," Calvo told KUAM News.

"We plan to start a language project, an additional language project. We're waiting to hear if we got funding for it, but we also want to give this data to Senot Onedera, Mr. [Tony] Ramirez, to Chamorro language studies program at the Department of Education."

Calvo says they hope the programs will utilize it to continue or sustain the projects they have and create new ones to encourage the use of the Chamorro language.