Picture South Florida as a superconducting supercollider with English and Spanish, the world's second and third most influential languages, firing high-energy particles at each other from opposite ends.

Weird creations emerge from that atomic crucible and one of them is called Spanglish. Not the Adam Sandler movie Spanglish, but the Spanglish language. Yes, language.

It's spoken widely here in your new South Florida home, and you will hear Spanglish rants from both sides of the language divide.

Monolingual English speakers experience only the most visible aspect of Spanglish, the abrupt mid-sentence shifts from English to Spanish and back. They may dismiss Spanglish unfairly as the uncultured jargon of people who, lacking proficiency in either language, grab at bits and pieces of either for the imperfect expression of transient thoughts.

Spanish Speakers Hear and Understand the 'Deep' Spanglish

But Spanish speakers hear and understand "deep" Spanglish with its adapted and respelled English nouns, English verbs conjugated by Spanish rules and English idioms translated word for word.

It alarms them. In their view, it's not just the mongrelization of a great and beautiful language. It's imperialist gringo barbarians at Cervantes' gates, all of them shouting, "Who's your daddy?"

If English is your only language, Spanglish examples may be confusing. But if you sound them out phonetically, you may hear your inner Ricky Ricardo pronouncing familiar English words.

For instance, the thing that frightens cats as it sucks dirt from the carpet? In Spanglish, it's a bacunclíner. Breakfast cereal of any sort: confley or sometimes, chirio. A job of less than 40 hours is un partain, perhaps at Berguerquín.

My favorite Spanglish word, probably used by Latina mothers, is bibaporú. Guess what that is. [Need help?]

Go to the computer. A mistake is made and it requires you to cliquear with your maus so you can deletear the file. Drive your carro downtown, hope you can parquear and maybe you won't get a ticket while you're lonchando.

In Spanglish, English Words Are Treated as if They Were Spanish

Spanish provides perfectly good words for click, mouse, delete, car, park and having lunch. In Spanglish, English words are treated as if they were Spanish.

Here's a more important example. The phone rings inconveniently and, with an English idiom, you promise to call back. "Back" in English is not just the opposite of front, it also connotes an opposite reaction in a way that makes words like "backlash" work. The Spanish word for back, atras, doesn't have that secondary meeting. If you translate it directly in a usage like "call back," the result is Spanish gibberish.

But it happens. And when Spanglish speakers issue a baffling promise to llamar pa' atras ("to call in the back"), they move Spanish words to an exclusive Spanglish understanding. It's a critical step, a big bang in language development.

Hispanics are already the most numerous minority group in the United States. In subtly different forms, Spanglish is also spoken in Texas, California and New York.

Is it an authentic creole language of changing North America? Some say it meets the criteria. It has rules, grammar and words for breakfast food, computer parts and even Vicks VapoRub.

Or, as they say in Spanglish, bibaporú.