How to Say “When” in Chamorro

Asking when comes up constantly in daily life—at work, at home, and in your community. When is the party? When did you buy the coffee? When will you work? In this lesson, you’ll learn core Chamorro patterns for asking “when” questions. We’ll begin with events (“When is the novena?”) and then move into asking about past and future actions. As always, this post includes Chamorro sentence drills, English translations, and Chamorro audio narrations by Jay Che’le to support your learning. Happy studying!

Contents

Introduction to “When” in Chamorro

In Chamorro, the word ngai’an is used to ask “when” questions. We can simply say the word Ngai’an? to ask “When?”, but we can also use it with other phrases to make our questions more specific.

In this lesson, we’ll learn some of the basic patterns with ngai’an, including:

Asking when an event will take place: “When is the party?”

Then we’ll learn the forms for asking about actions. Specifically:

Asking when something was done: “When did you lose the keys?”
Asking when something will be done: “When will you buy the coffee?”

We’ll practice patterns for “when” questions involving actions with objects (transitive verbs) and actions without objects (intransitive verbs).

In the next section, we’ll start building our first basic pattern with ngai’an.

Asking “When is the party?”

Let’s say you want to ask when an event will take place, such as When is the party? When is the gathering? These questions use the core pattern ngai’an i, “when is the…”, followed by the event. You may also read or hear para ngai’an i, “when will the…”.

We’ll practice with the full pattern below:

(Para) Ngai’an i + Event

Chamoru	English
Ngai’an i giput?	When is the party?
Ngai’an i fiesta?	When is the festival?
Ngai’an i nubena?	When is the novena?
Ngai’an i fandånggu?	When is the wedding celebration?
Ngai’an i dinanña?	When is the gathering?
Ngai’an i praktika?	When is the practice?

In the next section, we’ll start learning how to ask “when” questions about actions others have done.

“When” Questions About Actions (With Objects)

Sometimes we need to know when someone did something, such as When did you buy it? When did you lose your keys? To ask these questions, we’ll be using ngai’an with a basic action sentence.

In this section, we’ll practice with the same core pattern: ngai’an nai + basic action sentence, where the action is being done to someone or something. We’ll learn the patterns for asking about past actions and future actions.

Asking “When did you buy it?”

If we want to ask when something was done, the core pattern we use is ngai’an nai in front of an action sentence.

We’ll first practice with a core pattern, of using ngai’an nai in front of phrases like you bought it, you cleaned it, you made it. Adding ngai’an nai to the front of these phrases will change them to questions like When did you buy it? When did you clean it? When did you make it?

Here is the first pattern, which will be our foundation for the rest of the section:

Ngai’an nai + Hu Type Pronoun + Transitive Verb

In the sentence drills below, we’ll keep our practice focused by using the phrase ngai’an nai un (“when did you”).

Chamoru	English
Ngai’an nai un fåhan?	When did you buy it?
Ngai’an nai un na’falingu?	When did you lose it?
Ngai’an nai un na’gåsgås?	When did you clean it?
Ngai’an nai un fa’tinas?	When did you make it?
Ngai’an nai un fa’maolek?	When did you fix it?
Ngai’an nai un ayao?	When did you borrow it?

📝Note about na’falingu: This word means “to lose something”, in the sense that you’ve lost your keys, your phone, or your wallet. It literally translates as “to cause to become lost” (causative na’- + falingu).

If we want to communicate “losing it” in the sense of getting angry or demonstrating a lack of emotional control, Chamorro tends to use different words.

Asking “When did you buy the coffee?”

What if we want to ask about something more specific, like When did you buy the coffee? When did you lose the keys?

We make one simple change to our sentences, and add the something after the verb (ie: the coffee, the keys).

Here’s the full pattern:

Ngai’an nai + Hu Type Pronoun + Transitive Verb + [i + Object]

We will practice the same sentences from the previous section, but with an object at the end:

Chamoru	English
Ngai’an nai un fåhan i kafé?	When did you buy the coffee?
Ngai’an nai un na’falingu i yabi?	When did you lose the keys?
Ngai’an nai un na’gåsgås i gima’?	When did you clean the house?
Ngai’an nai un fa’tinas i kaddu’?	When did you make the soup?
Ngai’an nai un fa’maolek i kareta?	When did you fix the car?
Ngai’an nai un ayao i salåppi’?	When did you borrow the money?

In the next section, we’ll turn our attention to asking “when” questions about future actions.

Asking “When will you buy the coffee?”

What if we want to ask when someone will do something, like When will you clean the house? When will you talk to Juan? These sentences will start with the core pattern ngai’an nai para, followed by a basic action sentence.

All of our questions begin with the phrase ngai’an nai para, followed by any additional future markers and a Hu Type Pronoun. Here’s the full pattern:

Ngai’an Nai + Future Marker + Hu Type Pronoun

We’ll practice this pattern in the table below, to build our foundation:

Chamoru	English
Ngai’an nai para bai hu…	When will I…
Ngai’an nai para un…	When will you…
Ngai’an nai para u…	When will she/he…
Ngai’an nai para bai in…	When will we… (exclusive)
Ngai’an nai para u ma…	When will they…
Ngai’an nai para ta…	When will we… (inclusive)
Ngai’an nai para en…	When will you (2+)…

Next we’ll turn these phrases into full questions like When will you buy it? and When will you buy the coffee?

To turn our phrases into full questions, we just add verb at the end. This basic structure allows us to ask questions like When will you fix it? When will you borrow it?

The full pattern is below:

Ngai’an Nai + Future Marker + Hu Type Pronoun + Transitive Verb

We’ll practice this pattern with sentence drills that all use the phrase ngai’an nai para un (“when will you…”) to keep our practice focused:

Chamoru	English
Ngai’an nai para un fåhan?	When will you buy it?
Ngai’an nai para un aligao?	When will you look for it?
Ngai’an nai para un na’gåsgås?	When will you clean it?
Ngai’an nai para un fa’tinas?	When will you make it?
Ngai’an nai para un fa’maolek?	When will you fix it?
Ngai’an nai para un ayao?	When will you borrow it?

Expanding these sentences with a specific object is also simple: just add i + Object after the verb.

Here’s the full pattern:

Ngai’an Nai + Future Marker + Hu Type Pronoun + Transitive Verb + [i + Object]

We’ll expand our previous sentences in the table below:

Chamoru	English
Ngai’an nai para un fåhan i kafé?	When will you buy the coffee?
Ngai’an nai para un aligao i yabi?	When will you look for the keys?
Ngai’an nai para un na’gåsgås i gima’?	When will you clean the house?
Ngai’an nai para un fa’tinas i kaddu’?	When will you make the soup?
Ngai’an nai para un fa’maolek i kareta?	When will you fix the car?
Ngai’an nai para un ayao i salåppi’?	When will you borrow the money?

“When” Questions About Actions (Without Objects)

Now we’ll practice the patterns for asking “when” questions about actions that don’t have objects (ie: walking, working, resting, etc.). In other words, we’ll be making questions with intransitive verbs.

We’ll learn patterns for asking about actions that have happened (“When did you walk?”) and actions that will happen (“When will you walk?”).

Asking “When did you work?”

If we want to ask about when someone did an action, such as “When did you walk?”, we can just put the question ngai’an nai in front of a basic action sentences like “You walked”, “You worked” or “You rested”.

Here is the full pattern we’ll practice:

Ngai’an nai + Past Tense Intransitive Verb + Yu’ Type Pronoun

We’ll keep our practice sentences focused by phrasing them as if we are asking our questions to a single person, “you”:

Chamorro	English
Ngai’an nai mamokkat hao?	When did you walk?
Ngai’an nai macho’chu’ hao?	When did you work?
Ngai’an nai dumeskånsa hao?	When did you rest?
Ngai’an nai muñangu hao?	When did you swim?
Ngai’an nai lumalai hao?	When did you chant?

Asking “When will you work?”

If we want to ask questions about the future, such as “When will you walk? When will you rest?”, we’ll actually use the same pattern for future tense that we’ve already covered. The only difference is that we’ll be using our intransitive verbs in their future tense forms.

Here is the full pattern we’ll practice:

Ngai’an Nai + Future Marker + Hu Type Pronoun + Future Tense Intransitive Verb

Same as before, we’ll phrase our questions as if we are talking to one other person (“you”):

Chamorro	English
Ngai’an nai para un famokkat?	When will you walk?
Ngai’an nai para un facho’chu‘?	When will you work?
Ngai’an nai para un deskånsa?	When will you rest?
Ngai’an nai para un ñangu?	When will you swim?
Ngai’an nai para un lalai?	When will you chant?

Summary

In this lesson, we learned basic patterns for using ngai’an (“when”). We started with basic sentences asking about events, such as When is the party? When is the fiesta? Then we expanded our usage of ngai’an to include action sentences, to ask about when something happened-When did you lose the keys? When did you rest?. We also learned the pattern for future tense actions, to ask when something will be done, such as When will you fix the car? When will you work?

➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson (TBD)

Stay tuned for the next lesson in this Beginner Chamorro series, where you’ll learn how to ask “which” questions in Chamorro.

⬅️ Back to Previous Lesson

📒 Back to Beginner Lessons

Documentation & Further Study

References

Topping, Donald M. Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition). University of Hawaii Press, 1980.

Lengguahi-ta

How to Say “When” in Chamorro

Introduction to “When” in Chamorro

Asking “When is the party?”