This lesson is part of the Beginner Chamorro learning path.

Talking about actions is essential for learning Chamorro. In this lesson, we are going to learn how to talk about what we’ve done, with sentences like I drank the coffee. I borrowed the books. I ate the apple. We’ll learn the basic parts of these sentences and practice some foundational patterns to get comfortable with these forms. Happy studying!

Contents

1. Introduction to Past Tense Actions With Objects
   1. Hu Type Pronouns
   2. Transitive Verbs
   3. Article “i”
2. How to Say “I drank the coffee”
3. 📝 Study Resource: Keep Practicing on Quizlet!
4. ➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

Introduction to Past Tense Actions With Objects

Sometimes we want to make sentences talking about actions that we have done to other people or things, like I made the soup. They bought the milk. You took the keys.

These sentences have three key parts:

• A Doer who does the action: I, They, You
• An Action: made, bought, took
• An Object (the person or thing the action is done to): the soup, the milk, the keys

These are the kinds of sentences we’ll practice making in this lesson. To make these sentences, we’ll need the following:

1. Hu Type Pronouns
2. Transitive Verbs
3. The Article “i”

We’ll go through each of these concepts before making practice sentences.

Hu Type Pronouns

When we are stating the Doer (the subject) in our sentences, we need to use the Hu Type Pronouns, rather than the Yu’ Type Pronouns we were using in our Descriptive Sentences.

These pronouns will go at the front of our sentences.

To get started, here are the Hu type pronouns with audio:

Chamorro	English
Hu	I
Un	You (singular)
Ha	He / She / It
Ta	We (inclusive)
In	We (exclusive)
En	You (plural)
Ma	They (plural)

Transitive Verbs

We’ll be using action words that are transitive verbs. These words come right after the Hu Type Pronoun.

Since we are talking about past actions, we’ll be using the transitive verbs in their root form, which just means we won’t be transforming them in any way.

If you are unsure where to find these kinds of verbs, check out my guide to finding transitive verbs from the Introduction to Transitive Verbs.

Article “i”

The article “i” is what we’ll use to mark the object in our sentences (the who or what we are doing the action to). It can be translated as “the” in our sentences.

It helps to pair this together with the object, in phrases like the following:

Chamorro	English
i kafé	the coffee
i guihan	the fish
i techa	the prayer leader

In the next section, we’ll start making some full sentences.

How to Say “I drank the coffee”

Now that we’ve learned the pieces required to make a basic action sentence, let’s learn how to actually make sentences like I drank the coffee. I borrowed the book. I ate the apple.

The full pattern we’ll practice is shown below:

Hu Type Pronoun + Transitive Verb + [i + Object]

Chamoru	English
Hu kånno i mansåna.	I ate the apple.
Hu ayao i lepblo.	I borrowed the book.
Hu gimen i kafe.	I drank the coffee.
Ha fåhan i bestidu.	She bought the dress.
Ha hatsa i balakbak.	He lifted the backpack.
Ha chule’ i kareta.	She took the car.
Un fa’gåsi i platu.	You washed the plate.
Un li’e i batkon aire.	You saw the airplane.
Un fa’tinas i kadu.	You made the soup.
Ta na’gasgas i kusina.	We cleaned the kitchen. (incl.)
Ta egga’ i mubi.	We watched the movie. (incl.)
Ta yamak i bentåna.	We broke the window. (incl.)
En utot i hayu.	You (pl.) chopped the wood.
En hungok i binådu.	You (pl.) heard the deer.
En arekla i siya.	You (pl.) repaired the car.
Ma bende i frutas.	They sold the fruit.
Ma apasi i guagualo’.	They paid the farmer.
Ma konne’ i guihan.	They caught the fish.
In bisita i techa.	We visited the prayer leader. (excl.)
In usa i kareta.	We used the car. (excl.)
In yite’ i setbesa.	We threw away the beer. (excl.)

📝The Doers Can Be 3+ People: Any of the sentences above that have plural pronouns as the doers (Ta, In, En, Ma), these pronouns can refer to 2 people or 3+ people.

This is an important distinction in Chamorro because other sentence structures usually require that words be transformed to make them refer to groups of three or more.

But for the sentences here, no additional modification is needed to the verb because we are making sentences with specific objects.

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📝 Study Resource: Keep Practicing on Quizlet!

In this lesson, we have learned how to make Past Tense Sentences with Transitive Verbs.

If you want more practice with the example sentences in this lesson, use this Quizlet Flashcard Deck as a supplementary study tool.

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➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

When you are ready, click the link below to continue to the next lesson, where we’ll learn how to add more detail to our objects with the linker “na”:

How to Say “I Drank the Hot Coffee” in Chamorro – Adding More Detail to Objects