Georgia
Oct 29, 2005, 9:01 PM
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As many years as I lived in Spanish speaking countries, and despite the fact that all my life I have, more or less, spoken Spanish, I have always been somewhat bemused by the rosy prose of older Spanish speakers when writing, whether it be a personal letter or a business letter. I remember translating letters from the family for my husband. I would peruse the first page, all in a very small hand, and tell my husband that the first page, despite all its words, said, "Hello. How are you? Fine, I hope. We are well." Or, worse, when my 36 year old daughter came to the US and wrote her first paper for college and asked me to look it over. The first ten pages were sort of "fluff" that would never find their way into a paper written in the US. I had a lot of difficulty explaining the "drier" style of English college paper writing.
My question is this: has this propensity for elaborate prose changed at all? Are business letters still consisting mainly of -what to a US businessman would be unnecessary - verbiage that is there for the sake of courtesy?
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