This lesson is part of the Beginner Chamorro learning path.

In past lessons, we’ve focused on how to describe people and things in a positive way — like “I am thirsty” or “The woman is a singer.” Now it’s time to flip that! In this lesson, you’ll learn how to say what you’re not — like “I’m not thirsty” or “The woman is not a singer.”To create these sentences, we’ll learn about the Negative Marker “Ti” and how to use it to make negative statements. This post includes lesson notes, example sentences in Chamorro, audio pronunciations and a Quizlet Deck for supplementary practice. Happy studying!

Contents

1. Introduction to “Not” in Chamorro
2. The Negative Marker Ti
3. How to Say “Not Hungry”
4. How to Say “I am not hungry”
5. How to Say “It is not sweet”
6. Summary
7. 💡Make Your Own Sentences
8. 📝 Study Resource: Quizlet Flashcards
9. ➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

Introduction to “Not” in Chamorro

In this lesson, we will learn how to make negative statements, such as “The coffee is not hot” or “I am not tall.” The two concepts we will learn for making these kinds of sentences in Chamorro are:

1. The Negative Marker “Ti”
2. Vowel Harmony
3. Order of Words

Let’s start by learning about the Negative Marker “Ti”.

The Negative Marker Ti

In Chamorro, the Negative Marker “Ti” is a small word that translates to “not”. It is used by placing it in front of a word to indicate that something or someone is not that word.

In this lesson, we will practice using it with Adjectives and Nouns, to make phrases such as “not hot” or “not water.”

Since the word ti has an “ee” sound, using this negative marker means that the word following after it must change according to Vowel Harmony Rules. If you would like a review of these rules, please see my Introduction to Vowel Harmony lesson notes.

Now that we’ve learned about this negative marker, let’s do some drills to practice using it.

How to Say “Not Hungry”

When using the Negative Marker Ti, we will just put it in front of whatever word we want to negate. To make a phrase like “not hungry”, we’d say ti ñalang.

Here is the complete pattern:

ti + word

Chamorro	English
ti maolek	not good
ti kariñosa	not friendly
ti guaguan	not expensive
ti a’paka’	not white
ti hanom	not water
ti Amerikånu	not American

🗣️Don’t Forget Vowel Harmony!: As a reminder, the word immediately after the Negative Marker Ti must conform to Vowel Harmony Rules.

In the next section, we’ll expand these phrases into complete sentences.

How to Say “I am not hungry”

In this section, we will start to create complete sentences such as “I am not hungry” or “We are not tall.” To do this, we take our phrases from the previous section and put a Yu’ Type Pronoun after it. The specific word order we will follow is shown below:

Ti + [Adjective or Noun] + Yu’ Type Pronoun

The table below has some example sentences:

March 2026 Note: Audio is being edited and will be reposted soon – sorry for the inconvenience!

Chamorro	English
Ti ñalang yu’.	I am not hungry.
Ti lekka’ ham.	We (2 exclusive) are not tall.
Ti tinane’ siha.	They (2) are not busy.
Ti maolek hit.	We (2 inclusive) are not good.
Ti pulitikåt yu’.	I am not a politician.
Ti gayeru ham.	We (2 exclusive) are not cockfighters.
Ti Chamoru siha.	They (2) are not Chamoru.
Ti Amerikånu hamyo.	You (2) are not American.

📝Special Note About 3+ People: All of our example sentences refer to 1-2 people. To get sentences to refer to 3+ people, the Plural Man- Prefix must be added to the noun or adjective. This prefix will be covered in an intermediate level grammar lesson.

How to Say “It is not sweet”

What if we want to describe an object rather than a person and say things like “It’s not sweet. It’s not sour. It’s not bitter.”?

To form these sentences, just put ti + adjective. The pattern is below:

Ti + [Adjective or Noun]

March 2026 Note: Audio is forthcoming – sorry for the inconvenience!

Chamorro	English
Ti mames.	It’s not hot.
Ti manngi’.	It’s not tasty.
Ti mala’et.	It’s not bitter.
Ti ma’aksum.	It’s not sour.
Ti maipi.	It’s not hot.

📝The “It” is Implied: As one reader kindly pointed out in the comments, Chamoru is a contextual language. This means that in natural, spoken Chamorro, the phrases “It is sweet” or “It is not sweet” would be expressed simply as Mames or Ti Mames. There’s no need to add the pronoun gui’ because the “it” is understood through context.

I am so grateful to receive this correction and improve my notes, because my first Chamorro language teacher (who is also a second-language learner) taught me that we must always put the pronoun gui’ when referring to an “it”. Now I know that this is not correct. 😊

Summary

In this lesson we learned about the Negative Marker Ti and how to use it to make basic negative statements, such as “I am not hungry.” We also reviewed how Vowel Harmony Rules apply when using this negative marker.

💡Make Your Own Sentences

If you would like to go beyond the practice drills and example sentences in this lesson, make sure to reference my list of 100 Adjectives in Chamorro to build your own drills and sentences. You can even look at other word lists that have nouns to practice making negative statements.

📝 Study Resource: Quizlet Flashcards

Keep practicing the example sentences in this lesson with this Quizlet Deck as a supplementary study tool.

➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

When you are ready, continue to the next lesson where we’ll learn how to turn sentences from statements into questions.

How to Turn Statements into Questions in Chamorro – From “You Are Hungry” to “Are You Hungry?”