Hunting for Your Language
I have been asked repeatedly in recent weeks about the use of the prefix e- or o- in Chamoru meaning to look for or hunt for things. People have been asking me in the context of how to say things that we know we've practiced for centuries if not millennia, but no longer have explicit words for in our language, or at some point adopted Spanish or English words to express it, likely displacing an older way and the cosmological and metaphorical dimensions attached. Some good examples of this are words like energy, where most of the words we use today are all borrowed from Spanish, but no doubt Chamorus would have had some word or many words prior to colonization. In this case, we can find an example in the word kåhna, where 100 years ago, perhaps no Chamorus used this word on its own to express energy, strength or essence, power. But the word lived on in other forms, to cast spells, the one who cast spells, and so there is a clear link that indicates that this is a likely candidate. ...
