Ever wanted to say something happened—like “The child was found”; “I was hugged”; or “The cooking pot was taken”—but got stuck because you didn’t know how to say it without saying who did it? You’re not alone! In this post, we’re learning how to talk about actions when we don’t include the doer. This is actually a simple but powerful pattern that brings greater flexibility to our speaking and is foundational for adding a layer of complexity to our Chamorro language patterns. In this lesson, we’ll practice some basic sentence patterns and start understanding how to use contextual clues for translating the tense of these sentences.
As always, this post includes explanatory notes, example sentences, Chamorro audio pronunciations by Jay Che’le and English translations to guide your learning. Happy studying!
Introduction to Saying What Happened Without Saying Who Did It
Sometimes we want to talk about something that happened, but we don’t need or want to say who or what did the action. Let’s compare and contrast some examples to see what this looks like in English:
| Typical Structure | New Structure |
|---|---|
| The woman made the coffee. | The coffee was made. |
| The police officer found the child. | The child was found. |
| They hugged me. | I was hugged. |
In the first column, we have the sentence structure that most of us start with: Stating our Subject (who did the action); the Verb (the action); and the Object (what we did the action to).
But in the second column, we state what happened (the coffee was made; the child was found; I was hugged) without saying who or what did those actions (the woman; the police offer; they).
It’s the sentence patterns in the second column that we’ll practice throughout this lesson. To make these types of sentences in Chamorro, we’ll be using the following concepts:
- The Passive Ma- Prefix
- Transitive Verbs
- Contextual Understandings of Tense
- “They” versus “Passive Ma-“
In the next section, we will start by transforming a selection of transitive verbs with the Passive Ma- Prefix.
Note About Methodology: The Chamorro sentence patterns in this post were compiled from multiple written sources. While the examples have been adapted for clarity and practice, they are based on authentic Chamorro usage across a variety of texts. This post reflects patterns I have observed and synthesized from these materials.
Getting Our Verbs Ready With the Ma- Prefix
In order to make our sentences, we need transitive verbs that have been transformed with the passive ma- prefix. These transformed verbs will form the basis of our sentence patterns.
📝 Applying Passive Ma-: To transform a word with Passive Ma-, put ma- in front of the word. If the first letter of the word is a vowel, also add a glota after the prefix.
This will be the pattern we’ll practice:
| Passive Ma- + Transitive Verb |
Now let’s apply it! In the table below, we’ll practice with our first set of transitive verbs. The passive ma- prefix is shown in bold in the second column, to clearly show the placement:
| Root Word | Transformed Word |
|---|---|
| fa’tinas | mafa’tinas |
| hungok | mahungok |
| sodda’ | masodda’ |
| batångga | mabatångga |
| chule’ | machule’ |
Now for our second set of verbs:
| Root Word | Transformed Word |
|---|---|
| toktok | matoktok |
| chiku | machiku |
| kuentusi | makuentusi |
| ayuda | ma‘ayuda |
| kombida | makombida |
Awesome job! Now that we have our verbs, we will practice using them in example sentences in the following sections.
Example Sentences: “The Coffee Was Made”
We will first practice making sentences such as “The coffee was made” or “The child was found.” In these sentences, they will be referring to 1-2 people or things. (To make these sentences refer to 3+ people or things, we also need to add the Plural Man- Prefix. This form will be covered in another post.)
We will use our first set of transformed verbs from the previous section. They will be followed by i + Object, where the object is a noun.
This is the sentence pattern we will practice:
| [Passive Ma- + Transitive Verb] + i + Object |
Now let’s practice with some example sentences in the table below:
| Chamoru | English |
|---|---|
| Mafa’tinas i kafé. | The coffee was made. |
| Mahungok i kuikuentus. | The speaker was heard. |
| Masodda’ i patgun. | The child was found. |
| Mabatångga i achu’. | The rock was dragged. |
| Machule’ i la’uya. | The cooking pot was taken. |
Example Sentences: “The Two Coffees Were Made”
In our first set of example drills, we were referring to only 1 person or object. But we can also use this form to refer to 2 people or things. To do this, simply add i dos in front of the noun – this is a commonly used pattern in Chamorro for referring to 2 people or things, especially when the object is a noun.
We’ll practice with this word order:
| [Passive Ma- + Transitive Verb] + i dos + Object |
Now let’s make some example sentences in the table below:
| Chamoru | English |
|---|---|
| Mafa’tinas i dos kafé. | The two coffees were made. |
| Mahungok i dos kuikuentus. | The two speakers were heard. |
| Masodda’ i dos patgun. | The two children were found. |
| Mabatångga i dos achu’. | The two rocks were dragged. |
| Machule’ i dos la’uya. | The two cooking pots were taken. |
📝 1 versus 2: Remember that if you are referring to 2 people or things, you can add i dos before the noun. But if there’s only one person or thing, leave off the dos.
Great job! In the next section, we will practice making sentences like “I was hugged” or “We were helped”, where the object is a pronoun.
Example Sentences: “I Was Hugged”
In this section, we will be changing the object of our sentences. Instead of saying something like “The child was hugged”, which talks about an action done to a noun, we’ll say things like “I was hugged”, or “You were hugged”, which is talking about an action done to a pronoun.
The word order stays the same as for the sentences in the previous section, but our object is now going to be a Yu’ Type Pronoun. We’ll use this structure:
| [Passive Ma- + Transitive Verb] + Yu’ Type Pronoun |
Now let’s practice with some example sentences in the table below:
| Chamoru | English |
|---|---|
| Matoktok yu’. | I was hugged. |
| Machiku hao. | You were kissed. |
| Makuentusi siha. | They (2) were talked to. |
| Ma’ayuda ham. | We (2) were helped. |
| Makombida hamyu. | You (2) were invited. |
❓ What About 3+ People?: As a reminder these sentences still refer to 1-2 people. To make them refer to 3+ people, we also need to add the Plural Man- Prefix. This pattern will be practiced in another blog post.
Great job! In the next section, we’ll talk about how these sentences can be interpreted in different tenses, depending on the context.
Interpreting Tense in Chamorro Through Context
In the practice sections of this post, we were interpreting all of our example sentences in the past tense – I was hugged; The coffee was made; The child was found. Understanding these sentences in the past tense is a valid interpretation, and keeping our practice drills in a single tense helps us learn the patterns.
But different tenses can be interpreted depending on the overall context. These sentences might also be interpreted in present or future tense, not just in the past tense. To understand this, let’s look at some practical examples with the phrase mahuchum i tenda:
| Chamoru | English |
|---|---|
| Mahuchum i tenda annai mumalångu i dueña. | The store closed when the owner became ill. |
| Mahuchum i tenda på’gu na diha. | The store is closed today. |
| Siempri mahuchum i tenda gi Ha’ånen Krismas. | The store will definitely be closed on Christmas Day. |
| Ti siña yu’ mamåhan pugas sa’ mahuchum i tenda. | I can’t buy rice because the store is closed. |
| Mahuchum i tenda nigap. | The store was closed yesterday. |
Although the same phrase, mahuchum i tenda, was present in all the sentences above, it could be interpreted either in the past, present or future tense depending upon the overall context of the sentence. Unwinding how to interpret the tense lies in identifying the contextual clues of the overall sentence, thought, or conversation.
How to Find Contextual Clues: An easy approach is to find words with a particular time or tense associated with them. For example:
- annai: Means “when” and is interpreted in the past tense
- nigap: Means “yesterday”, which indicates past tense
- siempri: Used to indicate a definite future, and is interpreted in future tense
Admittedly, sometimes the contextual clues aren’t always as obvious. In those situations, it’s really important to pay attention to the overall context, beyond an individual sentence. (i.e.: Is the person telling a story about something that happened in the past? Are they telling us about what they’re going to do? Are they making a current observation?) There isn’t always a clean formula to this, so it’s also important to keep exposing yourself to the language, and trust that over the long run it will become more intuitive.
In the next and final section, we’ll conclude with another note on these sentences, about how interpreting with “they” and “Passive Ma-” often overlap in Chamorro.
“They” versus Passive Ma- in Chamorro
Throughout this post we have been practicing with the Passive Ma- Prefix, and interpreting our sentences in the context of describing an action without stating the doer. But in Chamorro, these sentences may be interpreted or understood as having a they as the doer.
To understand one of the reasons why, let’s start by comparing these sentences in the table below:
| Passive Ma- | Pronoun Ma |
|---|---|
| Mafa’tinas i kafé. | Ma fa’tinas i kafé. |
| Mahungok i kuikuentus. | Ma hungok i kuikuentus. |
| Masodda’ i patgon. | Ma sodda’ i patgon. |
| Ma’ayek i ga’lågitu. | Ma ayek i ga’lågitu. |
| Machule’ i la’uya. | Ma chule’ i la’uya. |
These two types of sentences are very close—practically indistinguishable, especially in rapid speech. This is partially why there can be confusion between ma the pronoun and the Passive Ma- Prefix.
If you find yourself worrying about being able to interpret the difference between a “they” versus “passive ma-” in these sentences, don’t. Practically speaking, the meanings often overlap in Chamorro with these simpler sentences.1 For example, when you say “The child was found,” it’s already understood that there was someone—a they—who found the child.
❓So why bother with the Passive Ma- Prefix at all? Why don’t we just use the Pronoun Ma every time and forget the Ma- Prefix? In simple sentences like Masodda’ i patgon versus Ma sodda’ i patgon, the distinction is not always as material. But as sentences grow more complex—especially with plural forms, possessive pronouns, future tense constructions and combinations of all these transformations—the passive ma- prefix becomes useful in its own right.
Summary
And that concludes this post! In this lesson we covered a lot of ground – we learned how to talk about something that happened without needing to state who did it. And we practiced the following:
- Transforming our Transitive Verbs with the Passive Ma- Prefix
- Making sentences about specific objects, such as “The child was found” or “The coffee was made”
- Using the phrase i dos when we want to talk about 2 people or things
- Making sentences about pronouns, such as “I was hugged” or “You were invited”
We also discussed these concepts, for more awareness around how these patterns may be interpreted and used in the “real” world of native Chamorro speech:
- Using contextual clues to interpret tenses with these sentences
- Discussed how interpretations of “they” and “passive ma-“ can overlap in Chamorro
Footnotes
- Donald M. Topping, Chamorro Reference Grammar (University of Hawaii Press, 1980), 192. ↩︎
References
Lujan, Schyuler E. Compilation of Chamorro Sentence Patterns. 2025. Unpublished manuscript.
Topping, Donald M. Chamorro Reference Grammar. University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Lengguahi-ta 