In part 2 of this mini-series on saying “don’t” in Chamorro, we’ll learn how to tell someone not to do something to you—for example, “Don’t talk to me”, “Don’t touch me” or “Don’t ask me.” We’ll still be using mungnga’ in this post, but with a slightly different speech pattern. And if you missed it, check out Part 1 of this blog series for a brief introduction on using mungnga’.

As always, this post includes example sentences, Chamorro audio narrations by Jay Che’le and English translations. Happy studying!

Contents
Introduction to the Lesson: “Don’t ___ Me” Getting Transitive Verbs Ready With The Ma- Prefix Saying “Don’t Talk to Me” in Chamorro Summary Up Next: Part 3, Saying “Don’t Run” in Chamorro References

Introduction to the Lesson: “Don’t ___ Me”

In the previous post about mungnga’, we learned how to say phrases such as “Don’t touch it”, “Don’t touch that”, or “Don’t touch the dog.” Throughout this post, we’ll learn more “don’t” statements with mungnga’, but this time we will tell someone not to do do something to us, such as “Don’t touch me”, “Don’t ask me” or “Don’t talk to me.”

To make these kinds of sentences, we will use the following:

• Mungnga’ (no, not, don’t)
• Yu’ (I / Me)
• Transitive Verbs
• Passive Ma- Prefix

In the next session, we will first practice transforming some verbs before using them in example sentences.

Getting Transitive Verbs Ready With The Ma- Prefix

To make our sentences, we need to transform them with the Passive Ma- Prefix.

We’ll follow the pattern shown below:

Passive Ma- + Transitive Verb

And now let’s practice with a small selection of transitive verbs. The root form of the word is in the left-hand column, and the transformed word is in the right-hand column:

Root Word	Transformed Verb
kuentusi	makuentusi
pacha	mapacha
ågang	ma‘ågang
faisen	ma‘faisen
atan	ma‘atan
kassi	makassi
chonnek	machonnek
sokni	masokni
dagi	madagi

Great job! Now these transformed verbs are ready to be used in our “don’t” sentences.

Saying “Don’t Talk to Me” in Chamorro

Now we will make full sentences that follow the pattern of “Don’t talk to me”, “Don’t touch me” or “Don’t ask me.” We’ll be learning two patterns for expressing these thoughts.

This first pattern starts with mungnga’, followed by a transitive verb transformed with the passive ma- prefix, and then the pronoun yu’.

We’ll practice with this pattern:

Mungnga’ + [Ma- + Transitive Verb]+ Yu’

Now let’s make some example sentences in the table below:

Chamorro	English
Mungnga’ makuentusi yu’.	Don’t talk to me.
Mungnga’ mapacha yu’.	Don’t touch me.
Mungnga’ ma’ågang yu’.	Don’t call me.
Mungnga’ mafaisen yu’.	Don’t ask me.
Mungnga’ma’atan yu’.	Don’t look at me.
Mungnga’ makassi yu’.	Don’t tease me.
Mungnga’ machonnek yu’.	Don’t push me.
Mungnga’ masokni yu’.	Don’t blame/accuse me.
Mungnga’ madagi yu’.	Don’t lie to me.

Great job! Now we’ll learn the second pattern, which puts the phrase mungnga’ yu’ before the verb. Here’s the pattern we’ll practice with:

Mungnga’ yu’ + [Ma- + Transitive Verb]

And here are some practice sentences in the table below:

Chamorro	English
Mungnga’ yu’ makuentusi.	Don’t talk to me.
Mungnga’ yu’ mapacha.	Don’t touch me.
Mungnga’ yu’ ma’ågang.	Don’t call me.
Mungnga’ yu’ mafaisen.	Don’t ask me.
Mungnga’ yu’ ma’atan.	Don’t look at me.
Mungnga’ yu’ makassi.	Don’t tease me.
Mungnga’ yu’ machonnek.	Don’t push me.
Mungnga’ yu’ masokni.	Don’t blame/accuse me.
Mungnga’ yu’ madagi.	Don’t lie to me.

❓What’s the difference? I’ve included two patterns in this lesson because I’ve seen and heard them used in similar ways. In general, both can express that you don’t want something done to you.

But Jay says it’s possible for overall context to shift the meaning slightly: The second pattern (which begins with mungnga’ yu’) can sound more like “I don’t want…”—a personal expression of preference or feeling—while the first pattern can feel more like a direct command: “Do not do…”.

Additionally, the mungnga’ yu’ structure is often used in Chamorro music, which could potentially indicate a more emotive tone. But we aren’t entirely sure 🙃

Summary

And that wraps up our lesson! In this post we learned how to make “don’t” statements that refer to ourselves, such as “Don’t touch me” or “Don’t ask me.” We continued using transitive verbs and the passive ma- prefix in these sentences, but in two different sentence patterns.

💡Study Tip: Try adding additional thoughts or sentences to the examples in this lesson, depending on the context. For example: “Mungnga’ mafaisen yu’ put ennao!” (Don’t ask me about that!)

Up Next: Part 3, Saying “Don’t Run” in Chamorro

Up next in this series will be a lesson on using intransitive verbs in our “don’t” statements so we can say things like “Don’t run” or “Don’t jump.” Stay tuned!

References

Patterns were learned from reading Chamorro texts and listening to native speakers.