Baseball Dialogues

For the past year I've been working under Dr. Faye Untalan on the I Ma'adahen Fino' Chamorro gi Koleho project, a grant funded by the Administration of Native Americans to create a standardized curriculum for teaching Chamorro at the college level. I've been working with Chamorro teachers from the Marianas and Hawai'i to put together a draft curriculum and we are currently pilot testing it at GCC, NMC and GCC. With the drafting of this curriculum we've gone through months of editing and polishing. Hundreds and perhaps more than a thousand potential pages were produced for the curriculum thus far, and the majority of it has been edited and erased. These pages contained exercises, activities, drills, vocabulary lists, grammar lessons and of course dialogues. Alot of these materials I've been holding on to since it can always be used somewhere else, even if it doesn't make it into this particular project.

Below is one of the dialogues that was cut. It was to be used towards the end of CM 101, but it was deemed not closely related enough to the vocabulary and used lots of structures that hadn't been explained yet in the draft curriculum. The section that it came from dealt with talking about sports, hence the focus on watching a baseball game and buying tickets for it. Later I might post some of my other dialogues which were not included. Many of them were deemed too silly to be used, since they involved scenarios where the police are trying to find someone who punched a dolphin or a farmer discovering that someone has planted Spam trees where watermelons were supposed to grow.

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Dialogue 1

Para u fambola i Giants yan i Dodgers gi otro simåna.

(The Giants and Dodgers will be playing next week)

Hunggan, hu tungo’ lai. Kao malago’ hao umegga’?

(I know, do you want to watch it?

Hunggan, i Dodgers i gayu-hu kada såkkan.

(Yes, the Dodger are my contenders every year)

Para Guahu hu abibiba i Giants

(For me I am cheering for the Giants)

Nihi ta konne’ i nobia-ta lokkue’.

(Let’s take our girlfriends as well)

Maolek, ya-hu enao.

(Good, I like that)

Po’lo yan Guahu bei fåhan i tiket siha.

(I’ll go ahead and buy the tickets)

Dialogue 2

Malago’  yu’  kuatro na tiket put fabot.

(I`d like four tickets please.)

Kao malago’ hao siya gi sanme’na?

(Would you like a seat in the front?)

Kalan maolek ha’, lao kuånto i presiu-ῇa.

(That great, but how much do they cost?

Trenta pesos kada unu.

(Thirty dollars each.)

Pues maolek. Maila kuatro na tiket para i siya gi sanme’na para este na Såbalu.

(Then good. Give me tickets for four seats in the front for Saturday’s game. )

Esta, siento bente pesos put todu.

(Ok, that`ll be one hundred and twenty for all.)

Estague i salåpe’ para i tiket siha.

  (Here is the money for the tickets.)

Si Yu’us Ma’åse’. Estague i tiket-mu siha.

(Thank you. Here are your tickets.)