In this lesson, you’ll learn how to talk about drinks that belong to you and others by using a special pattern that’s just for beverages. By the end of the lesson, you’ll be able to say phrases like “my coffee,” “Juan’s drink,” and “Maria’s water” with confidence, and start to recognize this pattern naturally in conversation or writing. As always, this post includes explanatory notes, practice sentences, English translations, and Chamorro audio recordings by Jay Che’le. Happy studying!

Contents

1. Introduction to the Drink Classifier
2. Using the Drink Classifier: Gimen
3. How to Say “My Drink”
4. How to Say “My Coffee”
5. How to Say “Juan’s Drink”
6. How to Say “Juan’s Coffee”
7. Summary
8. Up Next: (TBD) Chamorro Animal Classifier
9. Notes
10. References
11. Further Reading

Introduction to the Drink Classifier

As a reminder, Chamorro classifiers are used when we want to indicate possession of certain objects.

Instead of attaching the possessive pronoun directly to the word, we instead attach it to the classifier.

In this lesson, we’ll be practicing with the Chamorro drink classifier gimen, which we use when we want to talk about which drink belongs to who.

Using the Drink Classifier: Gimen

Before we start making sentences, we’ll practice using the drink classifier with the different possessive pronouns in Chamorro. This will form our foundation for the rest of the lesson.

We will practice by attaching each of the possessive pronouns to the end of the word gimen. The structure we’ll follow is below:

gimen + possessive pronoun

Now let’s practice our foundational phrases with this structure, which are in the table below:

Chamoru	English
i gimen-hu	my drink
i gimen-mu	your drink
i gimen-ña	her/his/its drink
i gimen-ta	our drink(s)
i gimen-miyu	your drink(s)
i gimen-måmi	our drink(s)
i gimen-ñiha	their drink(s)

Great job! Now that we have our basic phrases, we can start making longer sentences. In the next section, we’ll start using these phrases in a variety of common sentences and questions.

How to Say “My Drink”

In this section, we’ll start using our phrases from the previous section in some basic sentences.

We won’t follow a specific sentence pattern, but instead will try to make general questions and statements that we are likely to say in daily life when talking about beverages.

The sentences are in the table below:

Chamoru	English
Mampos maipe i gimen-hu.	My drink is too hot.
Estague i gimen-mu.	Here is your drink.
Bei fa’tinas i gimen-ña	I will make his/her drink.
Kao esti i gimen-ta?	Is this our drink?
Mångge i gimen-miyu?	Where are your drinks?
Ma chuda’ i gimen-måmi.	They spilled our drinks.
Kalang månnge’ i gimen-ñiha.	Their drinks look delicious.

Awesome job! In the next section we’ll practice the patterns for talking about what kind of drinks we have, such as “my coffee” or “our tuba.”

How to Say “My Coffee”

Sometimes we want to say the kind of drink we have with phrases like “my coffee” instead of just saying “my drink.”

To do this, just add the word for the specific drink after our possessive phrase.

Here’s the pattern we’ll practice with:

[gimen + possessive pronoun] + drink

Let’s first practice this pattern with the phrase gimen-hu (my drink) and different kinds of beverages. Example phrases are in the table below:

Chamoru	English
gimen-hu kafé	my coffee
gimen-hu hånum	my water
gimen-hu chå	my tea
gimen-hu tuba	my coconut liquor
gimen-hu binu	my wine

Now that we have some example sentences to get a feel for this pattern, let’s take our example sentences from the previous section and add different beverages to them.

The example sentences are in the table below. Note that we are just adding the specific drink to the end of each sentence:

Chamoru	English
Mampos maipe i gimen-hu chå.	My tea is too hot.
Estague i gimen-mu hånum.	Here is your water.
Bei fa’tinas i gimen-ña kafé.	I will make his/her coffee.
Kao esti i gimen-ta tuba?	Is this our tuba?
Mångge i gimen-miyu setbesa?	Where are your beers?
Ma chuda’ i gimen-måmi binu.	They spilled our wine.
Kalang månnge’ i gimen-ñiha lemonåda.	Their lemonade looks delicious.

Great job! In the next section, we’ll learn how to talk about whose drink we are referring to and say things like “Juan’s drink” or “Maria’s drink.”

How to Say “Juan’s Drink”

In this section we will learn two patterns for saying phrases like “Juan’s drink” or “Maria’s drink.” Both patterns are heard and used in Chamorro, although one pattern may be used more than another depending upon the speaker.

But we’ll learn both patterns and then use them in example sentences.

This first pattern is the shortest and most condensed of the two, and involves just putting the person’s name after the classifier gimen. Here is the pattern:

i gimen + person’s name

In the texts, you may see this form referred to as the construct form¹ which just means that we are just using a noun (in this case, the person’s name) to indicate possession of something (a drink).

This structure does not use a possessive pronoun at all, and is quite common in the Chamorro language.

If you’d like to learn more about this language pattern, read my lesson on How to Describe Nouns With Other Nouns.

To solidify our understanding of this form, let’s do some drills with different names in the table below:

Chamoru	English
i gimen Juan	Juan’s drink
i gimen Maria	Maria’s drink
i gimen Rita	Rita’s drink
i gimen Chåro	Chåro’s drink
i gimen Carmen	Carmen’s drink

📝Different Translations for “i gimen Juan”: In this pattern, the phrase i gimen Juan can be understood as “Juan’s drink,” “the drink belonging to Juan,” or “the drink of Juan.” However you translate it, the structure expresses that the drink is Juan’s.

Great job! Now let’s practice the second pattern, which is longer and in texts is sometimes referred to as the full possessive form² because it attaches the possessive pronoun “-ña” to the classifier gimen.

The structure we will practice with is shown below:

i gimen-ña + si + person’s name

Now let’s practice adding different names to the phrase i gimen-ña to get used to this new pattern. The example phrases are in the table below:

Chamoru	English
i gimen-ña si Juan	Juan’s drink
i gimen-ña si Maria	Maria’s drink
i gimen-ña si Rita	Rita’s drink
i gimen-ña si Chåro	Chåro’s drink
i gimen-ña si Carmen	Carmen’s drink

In this final set of sentence drills, we’ll put everything together and use both forms in example sentences. We will be modifying our example sentences from the previous sections:

Chamoru	English
Mampos maipe i gimen Lupe’.	Lupe’s drink is too hot.
Estague i gimen-ña si Maria.	Here is Maria’s drink.
Bei fa’tinas i gimen Carmen.	I will make Carmen’s drink.
Kao esti i gimen-ña si Dabit?	Is this David’s drink?
Mångge i gimen Juan?	Where is Juan’s drink?
Ma chuda’ i gimen-ña si Chåro.	They spilled Chåro’s drink.
Kalang månnge’ i gimen Låni.	Låni’s drink looks delicious.

Great job! Now we will add more detail to these phrases and state what kind of drink they have, such as “Juan’s coffee” or “Maria’s water.”

How to Say “Juan’s Coffee”

In this final section of the lesson, we will practice with a pattern for saying phrases like “Juan’s coffee” or “Maria’s water.” We’ll use the full possessive form from the previous section.

The structure we’ll practice is shown below:

i gimen-ña + drink + si + person’s name

To get started, let’s practice modifying the phrase i gimen-ña si Juan with different drinks. Our examples are in the table below:

Chamoru	English
i gimen-ña kafé si Juan	Juan’s coffee
i gimen-ña hånum si Juan	Juan’s water
i gimen-ña chå si Juan	Juan’s tea
i gimen-ña tuba si Juan	Juan’s coconut liquor
i gimen-ña binu si Juan	Juan’s wine

Great practice! Now let’s mix it up and practice with different names and drinks in full sentences. Our full practice sentences are shown below:

Chamoru	English
Mampos maipe i gimen-ña chå si Lupe’.	Lupe’s tea is too hot.
Estague i gimen-ña hånum si Maria.	Here is Maria’s water.
Bei fa’tinas i gimen-ña kafé si Carmen.	I will make Carmen’s coffee.
Kao esti i gimen-ña tuba si Dabit?	Is this David’s coconut liquor?
Mångge i gimen-ña setbesa si Juan?	Where is Juan’s beer?
Ma chuda’ i gimen-ña binu si Chåro.	They spilled Chåro’s wine.
Kalang månnge’ i gimen-ña lemonåda si Låni.	Låni’s lemonade looks delicious.

And that concludes all the practice sentences for this lesson. Awesome job!

Summary

That wraps up this lesson! In this post we started learning how to make possessive statements about drinks in Chamorro so we can say things like “my coffee”, “Juan’s drink” or “Maria’s water”. To make these kinds of phrases we covered the following topics:

• The Chamorro drink classifier, gimen
• Using Chamorro possessive pronouns with gimen
• Talking about specific drinks, such as “my coffee” or “your wine”
• Referring to people by name, such as “Juan’s drink” or “Juan’s coffee”

Up Next: (TBD) Chamorro Animal Classifier

Stay tuned for the next lesson in this series, where we’ll learn how to talk about our animals and pets with the Chamorro animal classifier.

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Notes

1. Donald M. Topping, Chamorro Reference Grammar (University of Hawaii Press, 1973), 222. ↩︎
2. Donald M. Topping, Chamorro Reference Grammar (University of Hawaii Press, 1973), 223. ↩︎

References

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. (1973). Chamorro Reference Grammar (PALI Language Texts―Micronesia). University of Hawaii Press.

Further Reading

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. “Possessive Nouns.” In Chamorro Reference Grammar, 222-223. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1973.

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. “Possession with Classifiers.” In Chamorro Reference Grammar, 223-224. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1973.