from the recycling bin:
an example of borderlands bi-illiteracy...

It's the end of the semester...Grades are done (!) and I'm getting ready for the new semester to begin in January...so I'm tidying up the classroom...
and I come across a note, unfolded, face-up in the recycling bin...
Immediately the spanglish catches my eye, and, so, yes, I pick up the note--written in two distinct 'hands,' an on-paper 'conversation' between two of my students (I do not know who, exactly)--and I read it.
(It's reproduced below.)

Purely academic curiosity. (Maybe a bit of teacherly verbal-voyeurism? does that sound bad?)
Well, okay--not 'purely' academic...but I had fun 'analyzing' it.

An 'academic' title of a linguistic analysis might be something like:
Adolescent bilingual code-switching:
The influence of spanglish texting on written informal discourse
in other words--an excerpt of Hispanic-teenage-girl-note-passing.

...to be read outloud--ah, spanglish...
============================

...k me preguntaste eso
IDK
ohh okaii well I wish we wur pero no c I dont talk to him cuz I chicken out! :(
y a silviano dise nada
de k ?
De ke te gusta
no she just talkes about him in my face like omg he is so cute
or like he has a nice body n like he was walking with me.. I get
pissed of she tryz to mack me jelouse
pues it's working cause you get mad nomas ignorala
well yea X nose y he know le podran desir k im nervous of going up to him and talking to him. y k c el puede ablar con migo! :D

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So...am I exagerrating when I talk about 'bi-illiteracy'?
Hmm...maybe 'semi-literacy' is more accurate than 'illiterate;'
so, 'bi-semi-illiteracy' then.