For this month’s lesson, we will be taking a step back to one of the very basics of CHamoru speaking. If you are a fluent English speaker, then you would know simple statements we may say in regards to yourself or others. For instance, you may tell someone; “My name is ____.” This would be a statement where you state your name. What if you were stating the name of someone else? Easy! You would say in English; “Your name is ____.” Lastly, if one were to state the name of a third party of the group or conversation, you would say, “Their name is ____.”
In the CHamoru language, these pronouns are identified by the three following words: yu’, hao, and gui’.
Yu’ is used to identify yourself in a conversation.
Hao is used to identify the other party you may be speaking with; usually in a conversation only involving two people.
Gui’ is used, as mentioned earlier, to denote a third or outside party of a conversation.
Going back to the sample sentences used earlier, the way they would be written in CHamoru is as such. For the sake of this lesson, the default name “Måtua” will be used in place of the blank spaces. Here are the translated examples:
Måtua yu’ I am Måtua.
Måtua hao. You are Måtua.
Måtua gui’. They are Måtua.
Imagine that you are the person saying these to another person you’re speaking with. Practicing these phrases with a partner can help to instill it into memory for future use. In some cases, for a more advanced speaking tactic, these pronouns can also be used in between certain nouns and other parts of speech. For now though, we will just be keeping it at the basic level of understanding. Try to pair these pronouns with other words to expand on your knowledge!