I'VE been talking to my daughter Sumåhi all this week about the movie “The Avengers." The most fascinating part of this is that we’ve been discussing the movie in the Chamorro language. After spending so much time hyping the film up, I'm hoping to take her and her brother this week.

Every once in a while, after a confusing but engrossing conversation about why The Hulk is so angry or why Thor flies around hitting people on the heads with his hammer, something hits me. The coolness and the strangeness of the conversation starts to overwhelm me. I’m fairly certain that neither Maga’lahi Kepuha nor Maga’lahi Mata’pang would have ever imagined that one day their language would be used by a father to talk to his daughter about how super-powered beings protect the planet from an alien invasion.

When we imagine what the Chamorro language is supposed to talk about or what it is supposed to express, it is certainly not the tragic relationship between Asgardian gods, or the innovations of Tony Stark who flies around in a metal can, blasting away enemies. In the minds of most on Guam, Chamorro exists for cha cha songs, for asking someone if they're hungry (Kao ñalang hao?), or for making a quick joke. It is not the type of language you use to really say anything too complicated.

Part of the reason why the Chamorro language is dying is because of the rigidity with which people use it. All Chamorro speakers are bilingual and most divide up their lives into spaces where Chamorro is spoken and spaces where English is spoken. They also divide the content of their lives into things you use Chamorro for and things you use English for.

Older Chamorros use the language with people primarily of their age group; and when speaking to anyone younger, they use English. Younger Chamorros use the language but only in limited ways. Chamorro is for playing around, but when discussing important things, things where you want to be clear and not struggle for words, English is what people use.

Colonization has played a clear role in creating these distinctions. Colonization is terrible for so many reasons, some of them obvious, while others are less visible and more insidious. You can condemn colonizers for their overt actions and crimes they commit against the people they colonize, but these interventions are generally ineffective or superficial in terms of impact.

The worst way in which colonization affects a people is by creating a barrier between them and the rest of the world, that functions like the old security clearance Guam used to have. In order for the colonized to interact with the rest of the world, you are supposed to require the colonizer and his permission. Colonization requires many fictions, heaps of lies that are constantly sown like seeds across the land. Sometimes the lies are too ridiculous for anyone to believe, but other times they take root and shape the way the colonized see things, even after the overt power of the colonizer is no longer being asserted.

The colonizer quietly copyrights what they bring into the colonies, and sometimes implicitly argues that your access to these things require you to be subordinate to them. For example, without Spanish colonization – no Catholicism; without American colonization – no Internet, air con, indoor plumbing, democracy, etc. If you've ever wondered why Magellan has such a big role in Guam history, it certainly isn't because he did much, but rather because he represents that first link in establishing outsider control over how Guam exists. Remember the phrase "He put Guam on the map." There is a surprising amount of power in such a simple sentence.

This relates to language because of how Chamorros have stopped themselves from using their language as their island and the world has changed. The world is too complicated for the simple Chamorro to do anything, and this is also true for the Chamorro language. The world has become too complicated for this simple language of jokes and JD Crutch songs to ever be able to describe it.

Language is an essential part of any people. It is not necessarily essential for their communication, but absolutely for their soul. For Chamorros to have given up so much of the world to English, they have given up so much of themselves in the process. There is nothing wrong with learning or using English; but why do Chamorros continue to accept the colonial lie that English is the only way to understand the world? Until we can re-imagine the Chamorro language as being capable of doing such things, we will continue to devalue it, and push it towards dying.