Utilizar vs Usar

Question

¿Cuál de estas palabras es el mejor cuándo hablando sobre utilización de la lengua de español? )Which of these two words is best when discussing the "use" of the Spanish language, specifically in regard to which words a person uses.

Here is a sample sentence -- Tu acento espanola y las palabras que tu usas van a instructivo para me. Also, because the subject is compound (acento...palabras), I chose "van" for the simple future. Am I correct?
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

"Usar" and "utlizar" are practically identical synonyms. There are some fixed expressions and a few restricted situations where one is preferred to the other, but in general, no difference is appreciated by most natives, and dictionaries provide nearly identical definitions, so I guess the main reason for having two verbs could be avoiding repeating the same word all the time.

Your sentence corrected should be:

Tu acento español y las palabras que (tú) usas son instructivas para mí.

You are right about using the plural for the coordinated subject.

I would have probably said something like this, though:

Tu acento español y las palabras que (tú) usas me resultan instructivas.