Re: CHAT: I need help with the concept "New World Spanish"

On Sep/01/2002, John Cowan wrote:

> And is it likely -- I'm talking about ordinary prose here, neither
> fine literature nor local dialect here -- that the vocabulary is
> going to line up with the Americans on one side of the line and the
> Peninsulars on the other?
        Well, number of speakers would be a reason for it line up with
american spanish. But peninsular spanish is still regarded as "good"
spanish, the spanish of the cultivated and rich. Natural remnant of
colonial period, I suppose. So, as people climb on the social strates,
they also "tune" their spanish to the peninsular one. Just IMHO, anyway
:-) This would push for the lining to be more to the side of peninsular
spanish. I've seen this in some south american TV programs, and also in
TV series :-)

        But there's another factor: there are each day more south
american inmigrants here (specially since the argentinean crisis). So,
maybe as they increase in number they also bring more american spanish
terms to peninsular spanish. This would push it closer to american
spanish. Though it also may be that inmigrants become integrated and
adopt peninsular spanish, specially their children.

        I think I don't know what to answer :-)

> Seems like we're getting somewhere.  Is "computadora" going to be
> unacceptable (odd-looking, strange, alienating, annoying) to readers
> in Spain?
        Just strange. Here we use "ordenador", from the french
"ordenateur". "Computadora" is the official term in south american
spanish, copied from english. There is also a implicit change of sex:
spaniards say "el PC" ("the PC"), as masculine; but south americans say
"la PC", as feminine.

--
        Roberto Suarez Soto