A recent review by "Learning Castellano" highlights a major issue with the Kindle version of this Harry Potter book we are served up--and it appears exclusively served up. My two stars does not reference the book itself, but is to draw attention to this problem I wonder if Kindle editors even know anything about.
First of all to clarify: Latin American Spanish IS Castellano, or Castilian, Spanish. If we were being proper, we would always say "Castellano" or Castilian at least, when talking about "Spanish", as there are at least 4 official languages in Spain today--and have been several more than that up until not that long ago. Since neither Catalan, Basque, nor Galician--all official "Spanish" languages of Spain--are spoken in Latin America, it is proper to refer to the language spoken in most all of Latin America, outside Brazil, as Castilian Spanish, or Castellano.
That said, there are some major differences in how Castellano is spoken between Spain and Latin America. Latin America had largely been settled by folks from Southern Spain before the accent of Castile or Northern Spain, with the irritating "theta" (letter z or a c followed by an e or i and pronounced like the English "th"), came to dominate throughout the Iberian Peninsula. So no one in Latin America today says "Grathias" or "Thinco", nor did they in Seville in the 1500s.
More importantly grammatically, though, is that in Spain the Castilian language maintains, or preserves, or revives (I am not quite sure which or if all) the "vosotros" verb conjugation (meaning "you" plural, i.e. "you all", "you guys"), while Latin American Castilian does not, and uses "Ustedes" (with the third, rather than second, person plural verb conjugation form) instead.
This would sort of be like IF the English in England were continuing to use "thee, thou, thy and thine" for "you" (singular), while the US had moved on to use "you" for both the singular and plural forms of you. Now the fact that this is a fairly significant distinction in usage between Spain and Latin America does not change the fact that both are "Castellano"--everyone in Latin America understands "vosotros" for the most part, but it is like the language of the Bible or Shakespeare.
Now to my point: there are, according to Wikipedia, 480 million native "Spanish" (i.e. Castellano) speakers in the world. Of that total, nearly 47 million live in Spain. Mexico alone has more than three times as many people. In fact, there are more native Spanish/Castilian speakers in the US today than live in Spain. Fact: More than 90% of native Spanish/Castellano speakers in the world do NOT live in Spain and do NOT use "vosotros" in daily speech. The Audible version of this book I downloaded does NOT use vosotros, but uses "ustedes", as does more than 90% of the Spanish speaking world. But for some reason, and without any explanation or warning, the Kindle version/translation uses the "vosotros" form (and a few other nouns that are different from the Latin American version)--as if to try to tell everyone that the only Spanish deserving of any respect is that spoken in Madrid.
I have no problem with both versions being available as there obviously have been at least two translations made--those in Spain are certainly deserving of their version too. But I think if Amazon/Kindle us going to sell the "Vosotros" version on of this book on Kindle--which is only how around 9% of the "Spanish Speaking world" speaks in daily life--I think that fact ought to be pointed out before you buy the Kindle version, if they only offer one version. This is not, after all, Cervantes, or some piece of traditional writing from a Spanish/Castellano author--this is a translation of an English children's book (though one enjoyed by adults too).
Imagine the uproar if publishers tried to impose "thy, thou, thee and thine" on US readers of the Harry Potter books, just because that was the "proper", old English, ca. 1500 AD. (And, I for one would be perfectly happy if we revived that in English because it would make our language far less confusing and ambiguous--but that hasn't happened) I doubt they'd sell many copies, but this is essentially what is happening when Kindle sells this "Vosotros" version of the Kindle book as the "Spanish" translation.
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