Chamorro is an Austronesian language spoken by about 58,000 people, numbering about 25,800 on Guam and about 32,200 in the Northern Mariana Islands and elsewhere. It is the historic native language of the Chamorro people, who are indigenous to the Mariana Islands, although it is less commonly spoken today than in the past. Chamorro has three distinct dialects: Guamanian, Rotanese, and that in the other Northern Mariana Islands (NMI).

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan. They are spoken by about 386 million people. This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog, Malagasy and Cebuano. According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.