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Title: Cuentos de cuanto hay: Tales from Spanish New Mexico by J. Manuel Espinosa, Joe Hayes ISBN: 0-8263-1928-9 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: August, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: A great collection even though the Spanish is modernized
Comment: "Cuentos de Cuanto Hay" is a great collection of over sixty folktales collected by the young J. Manuel Espinosa in the early 1930s in the Spanish-speaking regions of northern New Mexico. Originally published in Spanish as "Spanish Folktales from New Mexico" (American Folklore Society, 1937), the tales are here translated for the first time by the well-known New Mexico storyteller Joe Hayes. The book is the first substantial collection of Spanish-language stories from New Mexico available in English. Arranged in a parallel-text format, the Spanish version and the translation are made readily accessible to the student learning Spanish (although it has no vocabulary list), yet the stories have not been "dumbed-down" for language-learning purposes and can be enjoyed by anyone. Espinosa has written a short historical introduction and Hayes includes some brief linguistic notes.

I did find one potential flaw with the book, though. Espinosa's original Spanish versions published in 1937 have been modernized by Hayes. By updating archaisms and standardizing the grammar and some vocabulary, the translator has sought to make the stories more widely accessible to English speakers learning Spanish. This is fine, but you should be aware of the changes. Personally, since I have an interest in Spanish linguistics and have been studying some of the New Mexico dialect, I found the changes a loss. But the original versions are available elsewhere and only you can decide which one you prefer. Even with the linguistic changes, the book deserves five stars and more.