As I've posted previously, we're adding Spanish to our list of supported languages which means we'll be making Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird and OpenOffice.org available in Spanish. We'll be doing the "International" variant of Spanish as opposed to straight "Spain" Spanish as that seems to cover more of the world, unless I'm mistaken.
The one wrinkle is with the Mozilla apps as they are made available in Spanish and Argentina Spanish. Originally, I thought this was their classification for International Spanish but, after research, it would appear that Argentina has its own variant of Spanish. Any Spanish speakers who can shed more light on this?
Thanks!
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One thing about Spanish that I've learned is that my Spanish teachers from over the years appear to speak different spanish.
Lucky for me my spanish teacher is the mother of a black belt in my TKD Acadamy (and just happens to be in the same grade) I'll ask her if I get the chance.
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@digitxp:
If you are referring to spoken Spanish, mine for example (Bilbao, north of Spain) is very different from the one spoken in Andalucia, so you can imagine the differences with other Spanish speaking countries.
Writing is another story, at least inside Spain, where all people write in quite the same way, altough differences remain between Spain and South America.
@John:
I've checked (just a glance) both versions, the Spanish and the Argentinian one and I've noticed the usual differences in vocabulary:
- ordenador (sp) vs. computadora (arg)
- complementos vs. agregados for add-ons
- introducido vs. ingresado for entered
...
Any Spanish speaker understands both with no problem, even if he doesn't feel completely comfortable with the overseas one.
South American people from other countries should say if they consider the Argetinian version as their own or it's just for Argentina.
There are differences among Spanish speaking regions, largely in vocabulary and idioms, as well as pronunciation (not generally a problem here). I worked on a large IT project in Mexico with team members from Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, and Puerto Rico, as well as a number of English speaking countries. There were times the Spanish speakers actually relied on an older Jewish guy from NJ (who spoke high school Castillian) to translate because of the differences. For example, Argentinian Spanish has absorbed more Italian and German while Mexican Spanish has absorbed more Native American words.
I know a lot of this from research. But I need answers to the specific questions posed...
Regardless of the number of variants of Spanish in the world, most software is either in a single translation labeled "Spanish" (OpenOffice.org, FileZilla, Pidgin)... or has two: "Spanish (Spain)" and "Spanish (International)" (NSIS, AbiWord). Unfortunately, the "Spanish (International)" option is written different ways by different software: Spanish (International), Spanish (Mexico), etc.
The questions are: Is Mozilla's Spanish-Argentina equivalent to Spanish-International in other software like NSIS? Should we treat Spanish-Mexico, Spanish-Latin America, etc as Spanish-International?
We won't be supporting both for now. The same way we don't do EN-GB or EN-CA right now. So, we need to pick one.
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Well, obviously "International" Spanish would be the better choice, when it's available. But in Mozilla's case, I personally would go with Argentina, since, IMO, it uses a more "international" dialect of Spanish.
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See my note on labelling above I was typing while you posted. "Argentina" or "Mexico" doesn't necessarily mean it only applies to only those countries. Many publishers seem to arbitrarily pick a specific country for their Spanish-International releases.
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Ok, I'll be more clear on this. I think this should be the order in which the "spanish version" should be picked:
Now, when the options are country specific, I think they only give a few options: Argentina, Mexico and Spain. And I think that they should be used in that order.
So like I said already, in Mozilla's case, "Spanish - Argentina" would be a better option, since most Spanish-speaking countries understand that better than the traditional Spanish spoken in Spain.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." -- Robert Frost
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: baby ain't mine." -- Adam Holguin
John, It doesn't matter, as you can see, we all say that there are different kinds of Spanish and at the same time we give examples, that mean that we can understand each other so, who cares about what kind of Spanish are you talking? the difference is just a couple of words... If you can use one, and only one as International, I think Spain is the best option... why? well, 1) Spanish comes from Spain, 2) We all saw Spain movies, series, cartoons when kids, and/or translated in Spain (Now they are translated in Mexican and that doesn't mean that Mexico is the kind of Spanish that we all speak in Latin America), 3) we all have studied "Castellano" at the school using Spain's Spanish as a reference, 4) Our "Language Academy" is in Spain (this last one was a joke).
Uh! and is not a different Spanish in each country, are just variations in a few words.
BTW, I'm not from Spain, I'm from Venezuela... just in case that somebody is thinking that I'm supporting my own language variation... Am just trying to be fair and make a practical proposal.
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