Take a Texas Y’all, an Hombre of East L.A., <i> Un Poco </i> of Spanish: It’s <i> Tejano</i> : Linguistics: From East to West, North to South, mother tongues are getting stirred together for everyday use by the nation’s fast-growing Hispanic population.

It’s not strict English. Ni puro espanol.

No, what’s spoken here along la frontera is a mixture--sometimes logical, sometimes goofy--of two languages and two cultures.

“Our parents speak English and our grandparents hablan espanol, “ says “Rock ‘n’ Roll” James Echavarria, a disc jockey on bilingual radio station KIWW.

Rock ‘n’ Roll James hits the airwaves with a rapid-fire delivery--and no pauses between English and Spanish:

“KIWW 96, the Valley’s choice for hot tejano hits. Rock ‘n’ Roll James acompanandoles, faltan como veinte y dos minutos para las dos de la tarde. And right now, we’ve got some more jams. . . . “

From Queens to East Los Angeles, Miami to Detroit, Houston to Chicago and thousands of places in between, Spanish and English are getting stirred together in the everyday parlance of many among the nation’s fast-growing Hispanic population.

And as Rock ‘n’ Roll James will tell you, it’s become a hybrid dialect--and a marketing tool--here on the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

“I learned all of this by ear because I never really took Spanish class or anything like that,” said the longhaired 27-year-old, who, despite his moniker, plays tejano music--a mixture of Mexican ranchera and polka, with pop, country and Cuban influences thrown in--instead of rock ‘n’ roll.

“It’s sort of slang, tejano slang.”

After switching to a 60% English, 40% Spanish format featuring the popular tejano sound two years ago, KIWW jumped to No. 1 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and remains one of the top stations.

“We’re actually developing a new language,” Rock ‘n’ Roll James said.

He calls it tejano. Others call it Spanglish, or Tex-Mex. Some English-only advocates might call it a threat.

But unlike supporters of the Parti Quebecois, seeking to create a separatist French-speaking nation in eastern Canada, many Spanish speakers in the United States don’t debate which language to speak. Instead, they’re mixing both.

Linguists call it “code switching,” and they say it’s natural when people grow up with two languages.

“It’s done unconsciously,” said Lucy Garcia Willis, head of the modern language department at the University of Texas-Brownsville. “It gets the point across. Some people will frown on it. But it’s a cultural thing. It’s probably gaining more and more acceptance.”

With proper grammar taking a back seat to convenience, some educators worry that generations of Hispanics are growing up without knowing either language properly.

But Mark Glazer, an anthropologist at the University of Texas-Pan American, views it as a long-term movement toward English. Glazer adds that English itself formed in a mixture, with strong influence from French and Germanic languages.

And it works both ways. English phrases are increasingly slipping into the Spanish and Portuguese spoken in Latin America.

Although Willis believes people should learn the proper grammar of both languages, she says there’s often a grammatical logic behind many code-switching phrases.

A Mexican-American mother, for example, might tell her daughter to put on her red shoes: “Ponte los red shoes.”

The mother may know the Spanish words for red shoes (zapatos rojos or zapatos colorados), but it’s easier to use the English ones. And yet the mother says “los” red shoes instead of “las” red shoes because zapatos-- the Spanish word for shoes--is masculine, not feminine.

“Some will consider it totally butchering the language, but keep in mind the tendency of modern society for efficiency, saying things in as few words as possible,” Willis said.

So the verb “to type” (escribir a maquina) becomes “taipiar, “ which doesn’t exist in real Spanish. Windshield wipers (limpiaparabrisas) become “los winshi-waiper.” “Give me a ride” becomes “Dame un ride.” “I go on break at 10:30” becomes “Tengo el break a las 10:30.”

Tony Zavaleta, a UT Brownsville anthropologist who studies the border, says true code-switching--with no interruption in thought--takes more than simply knowing both languages. It’s the result of living in an environment like the Texas-Mexico border, where Spanish and English have meshed since the 1800s.

“It’s a cultural foundation, and sense of ownership and place, to facilitate a person to switch off languages,” Zavaleta said. “As we go through the construction of a sentence at the speed of light, our minds are picking up two vocabularies--a vocabulary in English and a vocabulary in Spanish.

“English is better for describing science. Spanish is better for describing emotion.”

And while phrases like “hasta la bye-bye” may be taking things to a nonsensical extreme, people don’t carry grammar books with them when they sit down to eat fajitas and french fries.

“After all, it’s not a matter of language,” Zavaleta said. “It’s a matter of communication.”