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

On Sat, 31 Aug 2002 21:51:56 -0400, John Cowan <jcowan@...>
wrote:

>Padraic Brown scripsit:
>
>> I'd be interested in knowing your reasons for
>> propagating the "New World" v. "Old World" Spanish.
>> Maybe _I'm_ wrong and it is quite meaningful!
>
>At the moment, I have two groups to deal with.  One claims that their
>written Spanish is acceptable anywhere in the Americas (but they make
>no claims about Spain); the second group claims that the writings of
>the first group are not acceptable in Spain.  Since we are paying
>both groups for their respective expertise, I am loath to believe
>that either one is wrong.  How, then, am I to label the output of
>the first group if "New World Spanish" does not exist?
I have some thought on this.

Talking about _written_ Spanish makes a _big_ difference, since
pronunciation issues become irrelevent -- the same spelling is used
everywhere.
There are a few grammatical differences: besides {vosotros} and related
forms, there's the matter of the 3ps masc. direct object pronoun (also used
for 2ps masc. corresponding to {usted}). In Latin America, {lo} is used,
but {le} is standard in Spain. A small difference, but sometimes small
things are critical. Only the Spanish speakers can tell you whether both
are acceptable.
If the first group's output actually is, as they claim, acceptable anywhere
in the Americas, they must have solved the vocabulary problem with some
kind of list of words to avoid, along with substitutions. I suppose
publishers must do the same thing as a matter of course. It seems odd that
they wouldn't take European Spanish into account as well.

Jeff J.

>--
>John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com
www.ccil.org/~cowan