This lesson is part of the 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 with audio pronunciations, and a Quizlet deck for additional practice. Happy studying!

Contents

1. Introduction to Basic Descriptions
2. Yu’ Type Pronouns
3. How to Say “I am hungry”
4. Make Your Own Sentences
5. 📝 Study Resource: Keep Practicing on Quizlet!
6. ➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

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.

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)
Hamyo	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.

Now that we have reviewed the Yu’ Type Pronouns, let’s learn how to use them in basic sentences for describing ourselves and others.

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 tired. I’m bored.

To form these sentences, we put our description (good, tired, bored) in front of the pronoun (I, You, They).

The full pattern is below:

Adjective + Yu’ Type Pronoun

We say the adjective first, and then the 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, so we can see what these sentences actually look like:

Chamorro	English
Manengheng yu’.	I am cold
Ñålang yu’.	I am hungry.
Må’o yu’.	I am thirsty.
Yayas hao.	You are tired.
Tinane hao.	You are busy.
Geftao hao.	You are generous.
Magof gue’.	She is happy.
Fatkilu gue’.	He is quiet.
Hoben hit.	We (2) are young. (inclusive)
Etigo’ hit.	We (2) are short. (inclusive)
Metgot hit.	We (2) are strong. (inclusive)
Lokka’ siha.	They (2) are tall.
Lalålo’ siha.	They (2) are angry.
A’gang siha.	They (2) are loud.
Butmuchachu ham.	We (2) are industrious. (exclusive)
Triste ham.	We (2) are sad. (exclusive)
Håspok ham.	We (2) are full. (exclusive)
Gefpago hamyo.	You (2) are beautiful.
Chaddek hamyo.	You (2) are fast.
Bråbu hamyo.	You (2) are lively.

📝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.

Make Your Own Sentences

The example sentences in the previous section are a great way to get started. But if you want to start making your own sentences with the structure we just learned, check out our list of 100 Adjectives in Chamorro to get you started!

💡Focus on the Pronouns You Use All The Time: 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 that you are likely to use most often. 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 how to use the different pronouns correctly.

📝 Study Resource: Keep Practicing on Quizlet!

And that’s it for Lesson 1! In this lesson we have learned how to start describing ourselves and others in Chamorro using Yu’ Type Pronouns and Adjectives, and that the word order is the opposite of English for these sentences.

For additional practice with the example sentences in this lesson, use this Quizlet Deck as a supplementary study tool for this lesson.

➡️ 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