When you grow up bilingual, some colorful linguistic creations end up in your vocabulary. To kick off our “Palabras” episode, the entire Latino USA staff got together to talk about something we called “transwording.” It’s a word we made up about the way we combine bits of English and Spanish in creative ways — inventing the words we often refer to as Spanglish.

We talk about listeners’ submissions of their favorite Spanglish words and then we dive into a conversation about what Spanglish tells us about the Latino experience with essayist and lexicographer Ilan Stavans, author of a Spanglish dictionary titled Spanglish: The Making Of A New American Language.