It's okay to cuss on TV if it's in Spanish.

I've had a few people email me asking for more teenage language lessons, so here's another round of what the kids are saying these days. I'm long out of the loop on standard white kid speak, so this only applies to my Latino kids, although the black kids who live in the neighborhood have picked up a lot of the lingo as well.

Came out - not a gay thing. To "come out" means to appear or act or exist. Someone comes out in a movie or a magazine. The kids sometimes add "barely", which I brought up last time, so a typical sentence would be, "Brad Pitt had barely came out in that Babel movie." (notice the tense is off - that's very common.) I regularly hear this question: "If I get my picture taken this weekend, will I come out in the yearbook?"

That's the only English phrase I've thought of lately. So now it's time for Spanglish. Yes, Spanglish, it's not just a boring Adam Sandler movie that made me fall asleep on the plane on the way back from North Carolina that one time. It's the name for the language that is creeping across the country and started right here in LA and surrounding areas. I tell the kids they can't use Spanish in their writing, but Spanglish is okay because it's an understandable dialect. It's essentially English with slang Spanish words thrown in with wild abandon. It's extremely cool to listen to. Every time I ask the kids to teach me vocabulary, it's Spanglish they give me, so I can't order anything at a restaraunt, but I can cuss you out pretty well. Here are some of the more popular words:

Chismosa - Gossip. Somebody who is all up in everybody's business. This is the feminine form, but it does come in a masculine too, as chismoso. This is my favorite Spanglish word and I use it all the time.

Pendejo/a - asshole. You've probably heard this one. Fernando Sucre uses it a lot on Prison Break.

Chinga - fuck, as in "Chinga tu madre" or "Fuck your mother". That's a very popular phrase around here.

Huey (pronounced like "way" - fool, idiot, jackass. It's technically a cussword. For many of my kids this word pops out every other second. I have a student who says it so often my nickname for him is Heyhuey. A commonly heard phrase using this word is "Callate, huey!" when you want somebody to shut up.

There are many, many more words but I will save those for another day.