No Stupid Questions

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.

I've never heard of that in the states. What region are you referring to? Sounds like an eastern seaboard thing to me.

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 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.

TIL there are two versions of spanish.

No answers from me here, but I'm curious - how much of the US learns Spanish in school?

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.

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 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.

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.

the short answer is colonization. the US school system admires the Castilian language more because they have a shared history with the Spanish empire of using European languages to commit cultural genocide against the indigenous peoples of America

Idk which variant of spanish I'm learning, but the teachers keep playing the Cinco de Mayo cartoon something about the day of the dead, so I'm assuming its the Mexico version.

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.)

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

Do they? Duolingo, meanwhile, teaches a Latin American dialect (possibly Mexican), with “ustedes” as the second-person plural. (IIRC, their Portuguese is also Brazilian, which is a greater leap.)

We learned Mexican Spanish in my redneck school.

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.

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