Questions with kuantu are a useful way to ask about quantities in Chamorro, such as How many books did you borrow? How much money did you spend? In this lesson, we’ll learn a core sentence pattern using kuantu (“how much” or “how many”) and practice expanding it to ask about past, present, and future actions. We’ll also look at how kuantu is used in questions about time, and how those questions can be extended to talk about past events. By the end of the lesson, you’ll have several flexible patterns you can use to ask simple but meaningful questions in everyday conversation. As always, this post includes example sentences, Chamorro audio by Jay Che’le and English translations to support your learning. Happy studying!
Contents
- Introduction to “How Many” in Chamorro
- Core Pattern: “How many books?”
- Past Tense: “How many books did you borrow?”
- Present Tense: “How many books are you borrowing?”
- Future Tense: “How many books will you borrow?”
- Asking “How many books do you have?”
- Asking About Time: “How many hours?”
- Summary
- ➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson (TBD)
- Documentation & Further Study
Introduction to “How Many” in Chamorro
Asking questions about quantity in Chamorro uses the word kuantu or kuanto, which can translate to “how much” or “how many” in English. This question word is used specifically when asking about quantities of people or things.1
There are a variety of ways to use kuantu for making questions and this lesson cannot cover all of them. Our focus here will be to take basic patterns that are already familiar from previous lessons and learn how to use them with kuantu.
Specifically, we’ll do the following:
- Start with a core pattern using kuantu na
Then we’ll build upon this core pattern to make the following kinds of questions:
- Asking about the past: “How many books did you borrow?“
- Asking about current actions: “How many books are you borrowing?“
- Asking about the future: “How many books will you borrow?“
Finally, we’ll conclude with two additional patterns that are helpful for daily conversation:
- Asking how much you have: “How much money do you have?“
- Asking about time: “How many months?”
In the next section, we’ll start building our basic pattern with kuantu na.
Core Pattern: “How many books?”
To get started, we’ll make questions that follow the general pattern of “How many ___?” How many books? How many children? How many suitcases?
We’ll also be practicing with words that aren’t about time (ie: hours, minutes, years, etc.) because questions with those words follow a slightly different pattern. Questions about time will be practiced in the final section of this lesson.
Here’s the full pattern we’ll practice with:
| Kuantu na + Noun (Non-time) |
| Chamorro | English |
|---|---|
| Kuantu na lepblu | How many books |
| Kuantu na låta | How many cans |
| Kuantu na famagu’on | How many children |
| Kuantu na salåppi’ | How much money |
| Kuantu na maleta | How many suitcases |
❓Is it “How Much?” or “How Many?”: Remember that in English, kuantu can be translated as either “how much” or “how many”. It depends upon how the phrase is said in English.
In the next three sections, we’ll build upon this basic pattern to ask questions about past, current and future actions.
Past Tense: “How many books did you borrow?”
Many times we want to ask about what someone did: How many books did you borrow? How much money did you spend? Forming these questions uses our core pattern from the previous section with a basic action sentence.
Specifically, we use the Hu Type Pronouns and Transitive Verbs to make sentences that follow the pattern “How many ___ did you ___?”
Here’s the full pattern we’ll practice with:
| Kuantu na + Noun + [Hu Type Pronoun + Transitive Verb] |
The core patterns from the previous section form the first part of the sentence, with the new additions shown in bold. We’ll be practicing with un (“you”) to keep the drills focused:
| Chamorro | English |
|---|---|
| Kuantu na lepblu un ayao? | How many books did you borrow? |
| Kuantu na låta un yuti? | How many cans did you throw away? |
| Kuantu na famagu’on un ayuda? | How many children did you help? |
| Kuantu na salåppi’ un gåsta? | How much money did you spend? |
| Kuantu na maleta un fåhan? | How many suitcases did you buy? |
📝There Are Other Ways to Form These Questions: In this lesson we are using sentence forms that build upon what we’ve already learned so far in the Beginner Chamorro series on this website. But please know that these questions can be formed in different ways, using different word forms and word orders.
Present Tense: “How many books are you borrowing?”
Imagine that we want to ask about something that’s happening right now: How many books are you borrowing? How much money are you spending?
The form of these sentences are the same as the previous section, with just one change: the verb is reduplicated.
Here is the full pattern:
| Kuantu na + Noun + [Hu Type Pronoun + Reduplicated Transitive Verb] |
Now we’ll take our sentences from the previous section and make one small change by reduplicating the verb:
| Chamorro | English |
|---|---|
| Kuantu na lepblu un á’ayao? | How many books are you borrowing? |
| Kuantu na låta un yuyuti? | How many cans are you throwing away? |
| Kuantu na famagu’on un ayuyuda? | How many children are you helping? |
| Kuantu na salåppi’ un gågåsta? | How much money are you spending? |
| Kuantu na maleta un fåfåhan? | How many suitcases are you buying? |
Future Tense: “How many books will you borrow?”
Asking about actions in the future – How many books will you borrow? How much money will you spend? – takes the same form as previously, but with future markers.
A sentence like Kuantu na lepblu un fåhan? becomes Kuantu na lepblu para un fåhan? We just add the future marker in front of our pronoun.
The full pattern is shown below:
| Kuantu na + Noun + [Future Marker + Hu Type Pronoun + Transitive Verb] |
We’ll take our sentences from the past tense section and make them into future tense by simply adding para:
| Chamorro | English |
|---|---|
| Kuantu na lepblu para un ayao? | How many books will you borrow? |
| Kuantu na låta para un yuti? | How many cans will you throw away? |
| Kuantu na famagu’on para un ayuda? | How many children will you help? |
| Kuantu na salåppi’ para un gåsta? | How much money will you spend? |
| Kuantu na maleta para un fåhan? | How many suitcases will you buy? |
🗣️Remember Future Tense “Shortcuts”: We’re practicing with the full form here, but remember that native speakers will often shorten and contract the future markers and pronouns together. Para un becomes pon, para bai hu becomes bai or bei, etc. For a full list of these shortcuts, see A Quick Guide to Future Tense Shortcuts in Chamorro.
Asking “How many books do you have?”
Everyday conversation includes questions about how much we have: How much money do you have? How many kids do you have?
These questions are formed with kuantu and possessive pronouns. Specifically, we put words that have possessive pronouns attached to them – like lepblo-mu, salåppe’-mu, maletå-mu – after kuantu.
Here’s the full pattern we’ll practice with:
| Kuantu + [Noun + Possessive Pronoun] |
To keep this practice focused, we’ll be forming the questions as if we are talking to just one other person (“you”):
| Chamorro | English |
|---|---|
| Kuantu lepblo-mu? | How many books do you have? |
| Kuantu latå-mu? | How many cans do you have? |
| Kuantu famagu’on-mu? | How many children do you have? |
| Kuantu salåppe’-mu? | How much money do you have? |
| Kuantu maletå-mu? | How many suitcases do you have? |
💡Remember to Practice With Other Pronouns: For more practice, try modifying these questions as if you are talking to more than one person, or asking about other people: Kuantu maletå-ña? Kuantu famagu’on-miyu? Kuantu salåppe’-ta?
Asking About Time: “How many hours?”
It is also common to ask questions about time: How many hours? How many minutes? Many of these questions use time words borrowed from Spanish, which means that the form of these questions is slightly different from what we’ve been practicing.
In these questions, the word kuantu becomes kuantus2 and the linker na is usually not used at all:
| Kuantus + Time Word |
Below are some of the most common “how many” questions about time:
| Chamoru | English |
|---|---|
| Kuantus åños? | How many years? |
| Kuantus meses? | How many months? |
| Kuantus simåna? | How many weeks? |
| Kuantus dihas? | How many days? |
| Kuantus oras? | How many hours? |
| Kuantus minutus? | How many minutes? |
| Kuantus tiempu? | How long? (Literally: How much time?) |
🛑Såkkan and Ha’åni: If we want to ask “How many” questions with the words såkkan and ha’åni, they tend to use kuantu na:
Kuantu na ha’åni? = How many days?
Kuantu na såkkan? = How many years?
We can also expand these time questions further, by adding action sentences to the end. For these questions, we’ll practice with some intransitive verbs (How long did you walk? How long did you work? How long did you sleep?), but you can use other verbs, too.
For this pattern, we’ll add a Yu’ Type Pronoun and an Intransitive Verb to the end of our questions. The verb will be in its past tense form.
Here’s the full pattern we’ll practice:
| [Kuantus + Time Word] + [Yu’ Type Pronoun + Past Tense Intransitive Verb] |
| Chamoru | English |
|---|---|
| Kuantus åños hao sumåga? | How many years did you stay? |
| Kuantus meses hao hinasa? | How many months were you adrift at sea? |
| Kuantus simåna hao umabak? | How many weeks were you lost? |
| Kuantus dihas hao pumeska? | How many days did you fish? |
| Kuantus oras hao macho’chu’? | How many hours did you work? |
| Kuantus minutus hao mamokkat? | How many minutes did you walk? |
| Kuantus tiempu hao maigo? | How long did you sleep? |
Summary
In this lesson we started learning basic patterns for using the question word kuantu, which means “how much” or “how many”. We started with a core pattern and expanded it to create questions about past, current and future actions. We also looked specifically at questions about time, and learned how to expand those to ask about past events.
➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson (TBD)
Stay tuned for the next lesson in this Beginner Chamorro series.
Documentation & Further Study
Notes
- Donald Topping, Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition). (University of Hawaii Press: 1980), 324. ↩︎
- “Kuåntus,” Revised and Updated Chamorro-English Dictionary, accessed March 12, 2026, https://natibunmarianas.org/k/. ↩︎
References
__. 2024. _Revised and Updated Chamorro-English Dictionary. Inetnun Kutturan Natibun Marianas/ Kkoor Aramasal Marianas (IKNM/KAM). https://natibunmarianas.org/chamorro-dictionary/.
Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. Chamorro Reference Grammar (PALI Language Texts―Micronesia). University of Hawaii Press, 1973.
Topping, Donald M. Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition). University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Further Reading
Topping, D.M. “15.19 REPETITION DRILL.” In Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition), 225-226. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Topping, D.M. “GRAMMAR NOTE.” In Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition), 226. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Topping, D.M. “15.20 SIMPLE SUBSTITUTION DRILL.” In Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition), 226-227. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Topping, D.M. “15.21 VARIABLE SUBSTITUTION DRILL.” In Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition), 227. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Topping, D.M. “15.22 VARIABLE SUBSTITUTION DRILL.” In Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition), 227-228. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Topping, D.M. “15.23 TRANSFORMATION DRILL.” In Spoken Chamorro: With Grammatical Notes and Glossary (Second Edition), 228. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980.
Lengguahi-ta 