This post is part of our 50 lesson Beginner Chamorro learning path.

Pronouns become truly useful when you start building real sentences with them. A simple and practical place to begin is by describing yourself or others with phrases like I am hungry or You are tired. These everyday expressions are immediately useful in everyday exchanges and help you grow your vocabulary naturally.

These are the kinds of sentences you can use right away in real life—and they help you build vocabulary fast. In this lesson, we’ll focus on how to pair Yu’ type pronouns with adjectives to talk about feelings, conditions, and descriptions. This post includes lesson notes, example sentences, and interactive study tools to gude your practice. Happy studying!

October 2026 Updates: The Quizlet decks have been replaced with interactive study tools embedded directly in the lesson. And we are in the process of adding new audio. Thank you for your patience as we update this post!

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Contents

🌱Introduction to Basic Descriptions

When we want to describe ourselves or others in Chamorro, there are two key things to keep in mind:

1. Word Order
2. Yu’ Type Pronouns

Chamorro sentences often follow a different word order than English. While we say “I am hungry” in English, Chamorro flips it around to say “Hungry I.” This opposite word order might feel uncomfortable at first, but with practice, it’ll start to feel natural.

Chamorro uses different sets of pronouns depending on the sentence. For these kinds of descriptions, we’ll use what’s called the Yu’ Type pronouns—these are words like I, you, he, she, we, they—for the subject of our sentences, which are who we are describing.

In the next section, we’ll review the Yu’ Type Pronouns we’ll be using in our sentences.

🌱Review the Yu’ Type Pronouns

When we want to describe ourselves and others, we will be using the Yu’ Type Pronouns. Before we start making sentences, let’s review these pronouns in the table below:

Chamorro	English
Yu’	I
Hao	You (singular)
Gui’	He / She / It
Hit	We (inclusive)
Ham	We (exclusive)
Hamyu	You (plural)
Siha	They

📝Inclusive vs. Exclusive: Inclusive means you are including the person spoken to in the “we”. Exclusive means you are not including the person spoken to.

If needed, use the flashcards below to review and practice the Yu’ Type Pronouns:

In the next section, we’ll learn some adjectives to build our basic sentences with.

🌱Adjectives: Words to Describe Ourselves & Others

Adjectives are descriptive words like good, hungry, and thirsty, which are used to describe ourselves and others. Look at the table below to learn a few Chamorro adjectives, which will be used in this lesson:

Chamorro	English
maguf	happy
tristi	sad
ñålang	hungry
må’u	thirsty
maolik	good
malångu	sick

⚡Learn It: Chamorro Adjectives

Use the flashcard tool below to learn and practice these Chamorro words. Start in Learn Mode to get familiar with each word and its meaning. Then switch to Recall Mode to test yourself by remembering the Chamorro word on your own.

In the next section, we’ll start using these adjectives with pronouns to make basic sentences.

🌱How to Say “I am hungry”

Imagine someone asks you Håfa tatatmanu hao? (“How are you doing?”) and you’d like to reply with sentences like I’m good. I’m hungry. I’m thirsty.

To form those simple statements, put the Yu’ Type Pronoun (I, you, they) after the adjective (good, sad, hungry). The full pattern is below:

Adjective + Yu’ Type Pronoun

Even though this is only two words, it forms a complete sentence in Chamorro! Now let’s practice with some example sentences, starting with “I’ statements such as “I am happy” or “I am hungry”. These sentences are below:

Chamorro	English
Maguf yu’.	I am happy.
Tristi yu’.	I am sad.
Ñålang yu’.	I am hungry.
Må’u yu’.	I am thirsty.
Maolik yu’.	I am good.
Malångu yu’.	I am sick.

Now let’s practice with the other pronouns and make sentences about other people:

Chamorro	English
Maguf hao.	You are happy.
Tristi gui.	She/he is sad.
Ñålang ham.	We are hungry. (2 people, exclusive)
Må’u siha.	They are thirsty. (2 people)
Maolik hamyu.	You are good. (2 people)
Malångu hit.	We are sick. (2 people, inclusive)

📝Special Note for 3+ People: For all the sentences above that use plural pronouns, the sentence structures shown above are for 2 people. To make these sentences refer to 3+ people, we need to add the plural man- prefix to the adjective. The plural man- prefix will be covered in a different post.

⚡Practice It: “I am hungry”

Use the study tool below to practice making these Chamorro sentences. Start in Learn Mode to begin guided practice with making these sentences. Then switch to Comprehension Mode to check your understanding and Produce Mode to start making these sentences on your own.

💡Study Tip for Learning Chamorro Pronouns: If you are struggling to remember the different pronouns, you are not alone! This was a big struggle for me at the beginning. Start by focusing on the pronouns you are most likely to use. A good place to start is with yu’, so you can become comfortable with talking about yourself. Then slowly move on to the other pronouns. Do not worry if it takes some time to get used to using and remembering the different pronouns.

📝Summary

And that’s it for Lesson 1! In this lesson, we learned how to start describing ourselves and others in Chamorro using Yu’ Type Pronouns and Adjectives, with the basic structure of Adjective + Yu’ Type Pronoun. Remember that the order is the opposite of English.

💡Make Your Own Sentences: The example sentences in this lesson are meant to get you started. But if you want to start making your own sentences with the pattern we just learned, check out our list of 100 Adjectives in Chamorro to get started!

➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

When you are ready to move on, go to Lesson 02 where you’ll learn how to talk about who you are in Chamorro. This next lesson will focus on making basic descriptive sentences with Nouns and Yu’ Type Pronouns.

How to Say “I Am a Student” in Chamorro – Describing Who You Are