If I learn Spanish spoken in Spain, will it be hard to communicate with people who speak Latin American Spanish?

Question

I am thinking of learning Spanish on my own. I would plan to use Pimsleur levels 1-5 for Spanish, and then I would use Assimil. However, the Assimil course only teaches Spanish that is used in Spain, and not Latin America.


I live in the U.S. and there are a lot of Spanish speakers where I live and I also really want to learn Spanish to communicate with my friends who speak Spanish fluently. However, almost all of my friends speak the latin American version of Spanish. I am not sure if there is a huge difference in those 2 versions of Spanish or not.


What do you think? Would communicating be harder to do if I learned Spanish spoken from Spain?

Answer 1

YES. The Spanish is very different when spoken in Spain versus Latin American countries. It’s almost an entirely new subject to learn. I suggest you stick with learning Latin American Spanish; it’s the most commonly used and learned.

Answer 2

Because of all of our modern mass media, people of different Spanish-speaking countries are getting used to each others' dialects. There might be some trouble in the more remote Latin American areas, but you can always slow down your speech, and ask other people to speak more slowly.

Answer 3

If you learn Spanish in Spain you will be able to communicate even if there are differences between the Spanish-speaking countries. There are also differences between British English and American English.



I'm from Spain and I'm studying British English, at least I try. Sorry, my bad English.

Answer 4

Sure. The only thing is that there are so many local words specific from those American Countries. As for the rest, things are bassically equal (or not too different), but always understandable.



It's true that they might laugh/be stranged (with no actual reason!) if you

- Use the Spanish sound of Z

- Use compound past tenses.

- Use "vosotros".



But those differences are easily overcome, since the changes are actually minimum.

Answer 5

No more difficult than it is to understand the variations of English spoken in England, the US, Australia, South Africa, etc.

Answer 6

Reasonably well-educated people in Latin America speak standard Spanish as well as their local versions. It's what they learn in school. It's like the situation with standard English and what you might hear in the UK vs. Australia or.the United States. The British and the Australians and the Americans understand each other, even if accent or vocabulary can occasionally lead to confusion.



Note that there are regional versions of Spanish in Spain itself, and regional versions of English in the UK.