No Stupid Questions

Why learn the language of a second world country when you can learn the language of a first world country?

Kidding/not kidding

I took 2 years of Spanish & didn't learn either

I'm not American so I'm speaking out of turn. But could it be resourcing?

Curriculums have to be made, and that sort of thing takes time and money. So I imagine it's easier to take a curriculum for European Spanish that already exists and just keep using it under the assumption that it's "close enough" for students to jump to Mexican Spanish from there, rather than reinvent the curriculum for Mexican Spanish.

So would ASL, yet here we are.

The education system is for schooling, not learning.

So would ASL, yet here we are.

The education system is for schooling, not learning.

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.

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.

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.

Mine taught Mexico Spanish, but with a brief reminder every once in a while about the vosotros conjugations.

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.

We learned Mexican Spanish in my redneck school.

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?...

Texan here. We learned Mexican Spanish (seseo, yeismo, ustedes for everyone, etc) It's been years since I had to use it for my job but IIRC there's a difference in the subjunctive verbs as well.

There are also distinct varieties of Spanish spoken in the US that differ from Mexican Spanish. As a general rule, if a common word has a similar-sounding English cognate (often false cognate) the cognate will be used. truck = troca instead of camión, concrete (as in cement) = concreto instead of hormigón, carpet = carpeta instead of alfombra, to park (a car) = parquear instead of estacionar, and so on. This is from my years working as a bilingual call center agent.

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 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.

In New Mexico we learned Mexican spanish

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.)

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.

Like many others have stated, my (also redneck) school taught primarily Mexican Spanish.

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.