How much difference is there between European Spanish and Central or South American Spanish? Which is taught in U.S. high schools? Could someone from Spain and someone from Mexico understand one another?
There’s a lot of variability even within European Spanish, and even more so through Latin America. One pretty consistent difference, however, is the virtual loss of the second person plural forms (vosotros) in Latin America and the substitution of third person forms (ustedes).
I would expect mostly Latin America-style Spanish.
This is sort of like asking if someone from Britain and someone from the US can understand one another. In general, there is no problem. However, there could be some problems on either side understanding some of the more extreme regional accents.
Even here in a small country like Panama, there are local variations in accent, to the extent that some of my friends from Panama City can have a problem understanding some of the locals in the back country. Think of a New Yorker trying to understand someone from the North Carolina mountains.
When I studied Spanish in high school, it was more Latin-America style Spanish than Spain-style Spanish. I think that is the more common situation here, although it might be different in college. My college Spanish class spent a lot of time on older Spanish language liturature, which skewed things more towards Spain. But that could have been an usual situation.
It’s been many years since I took a Spanish course. However, as I recall, even though my Spanish teacher in HS was from Madrid, we didn’t spend much time on learning vosotros forms. And when I took it in college, the instructors basically told us we didn’t have to bother learning them at all. I think in the US, it’s assumed that you will be communicating mostly with Latin Americans, so that’s the form that’s taught.
I was told we were being taught Columbian Spanish, as it was the most clean/consistent/easy to learn.
Highland Colombian, probably, since coastal Colombian is pretty much as awful as Panamanian. I find the Spanish of the Andes (Quito, in particular) by far the easiest to understand in the sense of being most clearly enunciated.
Yeah, we were taught the *vosotros *form, but only for completeness, and were told that it’s hardly ever used.
My college class consisted almost exclusively of reading various cantares de gesta. Talk about your obscure vocabulary and odd spellings!
I had a high school teacher educated in Spain, one college teacher from Cuba, one from Venezuela and a Spanish Lit course that focused on Argentinians.
The best I can compare it to is reading several books written in different vernaculars. Let’s say something from Bruce, Dickens, Twain and Faulkner. You shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the general grasp of things, but you will occassionally trip up on specific vocabulary and structure.
Latin America “Spanish” is actually based on “castellano” which is what most of us consider to be the language of Spain. “Catalán”, “euskera” and “gallego” can all claim to be “Spanish” languages.
Mrs666 is Uruguayan but when we lived in Spain (Madrid) she had no problem conversing, except that the madrileños just talked so damn fast.
6 6 6 writes:
> Latin America “Spanish” is actually based on “castellano” which is what most of
> us consider to be the language of Spain. “Catalán”, “euskera” and “gallego”
> can all claim to be “Spanish” languages.
You like throwing in irrelevant details that just confuse people, don’t you? “Castellano” is just another name for the standard dialect of Spanish as spoken in Spain. Catalan and Gallego are two other Romance languages spoken in Spain. (Romance languages are those descended from Latin.) These two languages are different enough from Spanish to be considered a different language rather than dialects of Spanish. Indeed, Gallego, although spoken in Spain, is actually closer to Portuguese than to Spanish. Euskera, usually known as Basque, is spoken along the border between Spain and France. It’s not even an Indo-European language, let alone a Romance language. Nobody generally says that Catalan, Gallego, or Basque are the Spanish language. They’re languages of Spain, but they’re not the Spanish language.
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner]
6 6 6 writes:
> Latin America “Spanish” is actually based on “castellano” which is what most of
> us consider to be the language of Spain. “Catalán”, “euskera” and “gallego”
> can all claim to be “Spanish” languages.
Mostly my use of spanish is a grab bag of accents.
I have used it in Spain,Mexico,Central America and ALL of south America.
I was even able use it in resaurants and hotels while in Cascais,Lisbon and in Sao Paulo.and Rio.
Th languge taught in american schools,particularly in the Sun Belt , is referred to as “Kitchen Spanish”.
About Gallego,euskera,and Catalan I know less than little.
I DO know that if you try to use your ‘smattering of ignorance’ in most spanish
language countries they will extend themselves mightily to mke you at ease.
The only trouble I had was in San Juan------but the other latinos in our hemisphere claim that puertorequeno is a whole ‘nother’ language ,mostly yankee!
EZ
Heh… who were you trying to communicate with in Spanish in Puerto Rico? 
It is true that many words we use are anglicismos, but then I present the case that that is also true with other words in other countries (Mexico!) and communities within the United States (I may have a hard time understanding the spanglish of NYC, even though I understand perfectly well our own anglicismos).
Standard, formal, professional Spanish varies little among countries. And even in those cases where the vocabulary is a bit different, you can understand what they mean by context.
If you’re talking about slangs, popular speech, and regional accents, then yes, those can vary quite highly.
As an example: I can watch any newscast from any country in Latin America (or Spain) and understand without any trouble what they say. Now, take me where they speak Mexican slang, and I probably will have some trouble understanding it all.
Oh yea, forgot to add… Many people say that Puertorricans (and probably others from the Caribbean) speak faster than other groups. That may be also why you had trouble understanding. 
Points taken—and, in part,accepted
EZ
A professor of mine was from Querétaro state in Mexico, and his wife was a red haired blue eyed Spaniard and while they were in Mexico with us, She had no problems conversing with the people who lived there. Accents (her typical Madrileño pronunciation of c before I and E and z were what caused a jerk in our group to mock her, but that was it). Slang terms could easily throw a speaker from Spain who travels to Mexico, but other than that, Spaniards don’t have that much of a difficult time understanding the various Mexican dialects.
For me, it was a LOT easier to understand the people in Querétaro than it is for me to understand people from Oaxaca.
My Spanish teacher learned the language in Argentina and I do speak Spanish with a noticeable Argentine accent (I say “zh” for “ll” and “y” sounds a lot of the time).
Recently, however, I took a Spanish class for the hell of it at a local community college and my teacher taught us Castilian. I had never even been taught vosotros! I spoke by far the best Spanish in the class, and yet my teacher had to take me aside one day to teach me the form. I tried to avoid it completely, so my teacher took to calling on me every time in came up in class, forcing me to use it. Foo.