llamar pa’ atras
v.— «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.» —“Is this our creole?” by Rick Stone Sun-Sentinel (Florida) Dec. 26, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
An anadrome is a word that forms a whole new word when you spell it backwards. For example, the word “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts.” Some people’s first names are anadromes. There’s the girl named Noel...
Joey from Orono, Minnesota, has been learning Italian and its many idioms, which makes him wonder if there are other languages that can simply be learned in a classroom without input from a larger cultural context of new and evolving expressions...