This question comes up again and again, and many people have heard so much on the subject that they are worried that if they learn Spanish from one part of the world, all their hard work will have been for nothing if they go to another part of the Spanish-speaking world.

I can't really say this strongly enough - you have nothing to worry about! While there are differences between the two versions of the language, they are so minor that you will have no problem communicating with people from the whole of the Spanish-speaking world. I know this is true for at least two reasons.

1) Firstly, television programmes from both Spain and South America are viewed in the other area without any problems whatever. A lot of the films that are watched in South America come from Spain, and most of the soap operas in Spain come from South America. If the languages were fundamentally different, this would not be the case.
2) And secondly, I learned my Spanish from Spain, and I have spoken to lots of people from South America, and have never had any difficulties with it. I have spoken to people from Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Mexico, and probably other countries, and while it does take a moment to tune into the accent, the actual Spanish is 99.999% the same.

The situation is the same as an American speaking English to an English person, or an Australian, or a South African. EXACTLY the same! The grammar can be very marginally different, and there are words in each of these places that are peculiar to it, but none of us would have any trouble in communicating with someone from one of the other English-speaking countries. None whatsoever.

The three areas where there are some differences are:

1) Pronunciation: South Americans pronounce the 'z', and the 'c' before an 'e' or an 'i', as an 's', whereas most Spanish pronounce these two letters as a lisp. The 'll' letter has different pronunciations in different countries as well. In northern and central Spain it is pronounced as 'ly', in southern Spain as 'y', and in some South American countries as the 's' in 'pleasure'.
2) Grammar: the word for 'you' is different in different countries. In Spain it is 'tú' whereas in some South American countries it is 'vos' or 'usted'. In Spain, this latter is the formal use of the word.
3) Vocabulary: There are lots of words that are different between South America and Spain, but then there lots of words that are different between Chile and Paraguay, and Chile and Ecuador, and so on. If we think about this, we can say there are lots of words that are different between American English and British English. In fact, there are lots of words that are different between Liverpool English and London English!

This to me is one of the fascinations in speaking to people from different parts of the world, and I think we should celebrate our differences instead of worrying whether we are speaking perfect Ecuadorean Spanish! At the end of the day, whoever you are talking to will be delighted that you have made an effort to learn his or her language, and will not be the slightest bit concerned with these extremely minor variations in the language. Wherever you are learning your Spanish, you can be extremely confident that you are learning the tools to communicate with 330 million people throughout the world!

Matthew Brock - Professional language teacher and online teacher for the video lessons at http://spanishlanguagesite.com