It is the same language. In fact some regions of Spain suck at speaking their own language. Spanish has a central authority that collects and organizes Spanish as it is used in the real world and it codifies it into its official rules. Furthermore, because of its grammar and syntax rules, you always know exactly how every word is pronounced just by reading it. There might be accents and regional synonyms, but there is a "standard" Spanish that everyone learns speaks.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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And then when to actually spend any time in a place where Spanish is the first language, you start to understand that, like any language, there's the academic form (commonly taught to non-native speakers as a second or third etc. language), and then there's the local version, complete with an the colloquialisms and slang and unique pronunciations. In Argentina, the double-L (which school taught me makes a "y" sound, "ella" being pronounced basically "ey-ya") is commonly produced as more of a soft "J" sound ("ella" becomes "ey-jha"). As far as my (admittedly limited) knowledge goes, that's really not common outside of Argentina. And then in Bolivia, especially among native descendants (Quechua and Aymara predominantly), the double-r (which school taught me is one of two conditions when you roll the R with a tongue trill) is more commonly pronounced almost like a "zh" ("herramienta" becomes "hezhamienta"). Again, not common outside of Bolivia. Spain has that classic "Barthelona" lisp, and uses the "vosotros" pronoun where most South American Spanish speakers would probably use "ustedes" (basically "y'all" vs. "esteemed plural second persons"). And that's not even getting into which verb tenses are used most widely in different regions. There's like 14 or 15 specific verb tenses in Spanish to English's 7, and in school I was taught to use specific ones to communicate effectively; then I went and spent two months in Bolivia pretty much never using past perfect or predicate, instead using past imperfect for 95% of interactions, only using past perfect with other folks que hablan español como segunda lengua, or in a few very specific interactions where more specifically was required than would be so in common, everyday interactions.
Dosen’t Mexico speak Spanish?
Because it's the same language. I grew up in Argentina, and the "Spanish" (the name of the language is actually Castilian because there are multiple languages in Spain) we learn at school is the "Spain" one. In reality it's the language as defined by the Real Academia Española so the language is the same (yes it includes the vosotros conjugation, no, no one outside Spain actually uses that but we learn it in school).
The differences between Mexican, Argentinian or Spanish Castilian is more in the pronunciation and the use of some words, but the language we learn at school is all the same, and I imagine it's the same one that you learn too.
That being said, using vosotros to us sounds similar to how using thy might sound in English. A good teacher would explain that outside of Spain we use ustedes which uses the plural third person conjugation (i.e. the same one as ellos), but the correct plural second person is vosotros.
Here in Canada we learn Parisian French in school despite Quebecois French being one of our national languages.
It’s probably because, like BBC/Oxford English, those are the places that have an “official” version of the language they try to preserve. Same thing happens with Portugese, despite Brazilian Portugese being more commonly spoken than Portugal Portugese.
I don't know what we you're referring to, but in the part of central Ontario where my nephew attends school, the French immersion schools are most definitely teaching Quebecois French.
I tried speaking real French with my nephew and he reacted as if I was a space alien.
When I was in school in the 1970s it was because they couldn't get French teachers from Quebec. The youth wanted to stay and build a sovereign Quebec. So they imported French teachers from France and I speak like a French Duke.
What state are you from? In California, we learned Mexican Spanish. My teachers very briefly mentioned vos/vosotros, but we never spent any time on those conjugations and were never tested on them.
Although... now that you mention it... maybe the textbook was for Iberian Spanish... I definitely remember the teacher going over vocabulary, getting to the word "coger", and then 90% of the class busting up laughing, while the other 10% was confused! 😂
Maybe we did have Iberian Spanish textbooks, but since most people in my town were Mexican, we learned Mexican Spanish from the teacher using an Iberian Spanish textbook?...
I'll be honest, I never hear anyone say vos in Spain, except an Argentinian who said it all the time and it sounded really odd
I learned Cuban Spanish. Upon going to Spain, I was told I spoke with the English vocabulary and accent equivalent to a southern yokel from the 1970s.
Because language learning uses the “standard variety” of the said language. In this case, it’s Castilian (Spain Spanish). Mexican Spanish is considered a dialect. Same way Mandarin is taught instead of Cantonese, Modern Standard Arabic instead of Egyptian Arabic & non-English speaking countries teach British English instead of American English.
Mandarin and Cantonese are essentially two different languages that happen to share the same characters. Someone from Honduras would be able to understand 99.9% of what a Spaniard says. If you only speak Mandarin you wouldn't be able to understand Cantonese at all.
It's wild when you look into how many different languages are "Chinese". It's like if someone were to say that someone from Germany spoke "European".
In contrast though, I'm close to native in German, yet have a hard time with Austro-Bavarian dialects and can't understand Schwiizerdütsch at all. The amount of times I have to say "Hochdeutsch, bitte..."
Oida
Having learned a language where dialect often means you can barely understand each other if at all, I'm more inclined to consider Mexican vs Castilian an accent much the same way as English's American vs Australian/british/etc..
Fun fact: Mexican Spanish is derived from Castilian Spanish from the central and northern regions of Spain, and was later influenced by Indigenous, African and Caribbean languages.
It doesn't change what you said, I just think it's a cool fact. :D
But why?
I'd think in all of those cases it should be the variant that has the greatest population or proximity.
Formality and standardized grammar.
At some point, when you're involving teaching a language to a class, you need a systematic way of doing so.
Typically, that means going with dictionaries and that in turn is likely to be the most formal version of a language's pronunciation. And, with grammar, you start with the simplest but also most standardized, codified version because that's what the books are going to use.
You don't worry about idiom and dialect until you've got a fairly good grasp of the formal. Since Castilian Spanish is more or less the oldest formal Spanish, we end up learning that first.
Like, I suck at learning languages. But I tried several. One of those was Spanish. School Spanish is kinda like school English, it's taught in strict way. Vocabulary with pronunciation, grammar rules, verb conjugation. Conversationsal Spanish just isn't what most schools are going to start with. One could argue whether or not that's the best place to start or not, but it is the way most languages get taught.
I dated a girl from Mexico City during that time, and she said the books were essentially the same there at least.
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French taught on Canada (outside Quebec) is France French, not Quebec French. My source on this is that I was taught to say "we" for "oui" and not "wayh". And the Quebec French sound I'm only getting from comediens on CBC so that could be way off.
I once stayed in a youth hostel rural Quebec and had a really weirdly hostile reception from people there, despite dredging up my very best schoolgirl French to try and make conversation. Turns out they thought I was from Ontario. When I revealed I was a Kiwi they were all suddenly very friendly. Too late!
Ouais is more like 'yeah', not 'yes'.
France French people say wayh too. It's the same difference between saying "yes" and "yeah".
Maybe it's because I'm from California, but we learned Mexico-Spanish. The books included Spain-Spanish (i.e. vos conjugations), but my teachers never included it in our lessons.
Kinda the same here in Nevada. Our Spanish teacher explained them briefly but told us we didn't need to learn them, didn't test us on them, so on.
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TIL there are two versions of spanish.
There's uh, lots more than 2. It's similar to how there's English English and Nigerian English, just dialectical differences - some more major than others.
Or American English and maybe southern American English? Not sure thats different enough to count.
Depending on how diverged they are people can communicate between them with various words or phrases that are different.
Ex. Americans use the word toilet, England uses loo (which might also refer to the whole bathroom? I'm sure someone from England will correct me)
Toilet can mean the whole room if separate (i.e. no shower or bath) or just the appliance, depending on context. Can use loo to mean what Americans would refer to as 'bsthroom'/'restroom'.
A lot more than two. Even within Latin America, there are some fairly interesting differences in grammar, vocab, and pronunciation.
because the school system is controlled by old people and they don't know the difference. in my high school we had Spanish teachers that were actually from Mexico and south America and they taught us useful Spanish.
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Mine taught Mexico Spanish, but with a brief reminder every once in a while about the vosotros conjugations.
We learned American Spanish when I was in school, no vosotros, no soft S, because we learned it from Cuban teachers. My kids got a mix but mostly, as you are saying, Spain Spanish. I think part of the reason is that Spain Spanish is one thing - canonical Spanish, yes? But in the Americas it's varied, different in the US from Mexico, from Colombia, from Argentina, Costa Rica. Dialects.
I think it's silly to say that Spain Spanish is canonical, though. Like, says who? Spanish people? Spanish in Spain is a dialect just like any other Spanish-speaking country. Imo it makes sense to teach the dialect that learners are most likely to encounter based on their geographic location, with context about the other dialects.
We learned Mexican Spanish in my redneck school.
I took Spanish-for-Spanish-Speakers in public school so my experience may be different.
“Spanish-Spanish” (Castillian-Spanish, Castellano) is pretty easy universally understood and accepted as a “proper” Spanish. It seemed to work well despite our mixed nationalities in the class (Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and a few more but those are first that came to mind.)
No answers from me here, but I'm curious - how much of the US learns Spanish in school?
My knowledge may be dated and it may vary by state, but the "I want to go to uni" track had a two-year requirement of a foreign language. When I was in school, French and Spanish were the only choices and most people wanted to study Spanish. My school system had German as well at some point, but it was cut before I got into highschool in the mid '90s. Some schools have Latin, Japanese, and others as well.
Here in the upper mid west a lot of schools teach Spanish. Not at a you can speak level usually. Similar to how a lot of people learn biology and forget it all when they graduate.
In my state there was some reason they wanted us all to take a second language (I think it was some scholarship we would qualify for our something?) and I always thought the reason most schools had Spanish was because finding a teacher certificated to teach Spanish was more common than other languages. And both of mine were just Midwest white dudes.
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