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

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to describe who you are in Chamorro using sentences like “I am a student,” “I am a teacher,” or “I am a woman.” These simple patterns help you talk about your profession, identity, and the roles you hold in everyday life—making them some of the most practical sentences to learn early on. This post includes example sentences in Chamorro and study tools for more interactive practice. Happy studying!

October 2026 Update: The Quizlet decks have been replaced with interactive study tools embedded directly in the lesson, and the audio recordings are being updated to reflect the new lesson content. Thank you for your patience as we update this post!

Contents

🌱Describing Yourself With Nouns

In this lesson, we’ll learn how to talk more about who we are in Chamorro. We can describe our profession, our roles in our family, or other identities that we occupy. This may include sentences like I am a teacher. I am a mother. I am a writer.

To do this, we refer to ourselves and others with the Yu’ Type Pronouns (I, you, they, we) and describe ourselves with Nouns (teacher, mother, writer, etc.).

In the next section, we’ll practice the core pattern.

⚡Learn It: Chamorro Words for People

Before we start practicing our sentence pattern, let’s first learn some Chamorro words for people. Then we’ll use these words in our sentence practice. These words are below:

Chamorro	English
palao’an	woman
låhi	man
nåna	mother
tåta	father
estudiånti	student
fáfa’na’gui	teacher
Amerikånu	American
Chamoru / CHamoru	Chamorro
enfetmera	nurse
médiku / doktót	doctor
må’gas	boss / manager
fáfa’cho’chu’	worker
guågualu’	farmer
pípeska / pépeska / peskadót / peskadora	fisherman or hunter
polisía	police officer
taotao guåfi	fireman

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 and producing the Chamorro word on your own.

🌱How to Say “I am a student”

Making statements like “I am a student” follows the same pattern as the sentences from our previous lesson. Instead of using adjectives (hungry, thirsty, sick), we will describe ourselves with nouns (woman, teacher, mother).

Now let’s use those nouns in complete sentences to say things like “I am a woman”, “I am a mother”, or “I am a student”. We will use this sentence pattern:

Noun + Yu’ Type Pronoun

To get started, let’s make some basic “I” statements to describe ourselves:

Chamorro	English
Palao’an yu’.	I am a woman.
Nåna yu’.	I am a mother.
Estudiånti yu’.	I am a student.
Chamoru yu’.	I am Chamorro.
Guagualu’ yu’.	I am a farmer.

Let’s add some sentences with the singular pronouns hao and gui:

Chamorro	English
Låhi hao.	You are a man.
Tåta hao.	You are a father.
Amerikånu gui.	She / he is American.
Médiku gui.	She / he is Chamorro.
Taotao guåfi hao.	You are a fireman.
Polisía gui.	She / he is a police officer.

Now let’s practice with the plural pronouns (hit, ham, hamyu, and siha). Note that all of the sentences below are talking about 2 people:

Chamorro	English
Fáfa’na’gui hit.	We (2) are teachers.
Må’gas hit.	We (2) are managers.
Estudiånti ham.	We (2) are students.
Fáfa’cho’chu’ ham.	We (2) are workers.
Polisía siha.	They (2) are police officers.
Taotao guåfi siha.	They (2) are firemen.
Pípeska hamyu.	You (2) are fishermen.
Guågualu’ hamyu.	You (2) are farmers.

📝 Talking About 3+ people: The sentences above that use plural pronouns are in the form for only 2 people. To make these descriptions refer to 3+ people, the noun must be modified with the plural man- prefix, to make sentences like Manestudianti ham or Manmå’gas siha. The plural man- prefix will be covered in another post.

⚡Practice It: “I am a student”

Use the study tool below to practice understanding and producing these Chamorro sentences. Start in Learn Mode for guided sentence practice before trying Comprehension Mode to read the Chamorro sentence check that you understand its meaning. Then switch to Produce Mode to start making these sentences on your own.

📝Summary

In this lesson we learned how to describe ourselves and others with nouns and pronouns. We used the basic pattern of Noun + Yu’ Type Pronoun to make sentences like “I am a woman”, “I am a mother”, and “I am a student”.

💡Make Your Own Sentences: If you want to make your own sentences with this structure, check out my word list for people in Chamorro to get you started!

➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

When you are ready, continue to the next lesson to learn how to add more detail to your descriptions and say things like I am a tired student.

How to Say “I Am a Good Student” in Chamorro – Adding Details When Describing Yourself and Others