What kind of Spanish..?
I joined this web community recently. What I have used and looked up so far seemed very useful. So, thank you! However, I would like to know what type of Spanish is being taught here. I have watched one video and I noticed that the presenter spoke with a South American accent and that some of the new words were South American. Nothing wrong with that at all. But I just wondered whether accents and vocabulary from both sides of the Atlantic are featured here. The main reason for my learning Castilian is for holiday purposes in Spain, so I would want to be consistent in my accent and vocabulary. Many thanks.
5 Answers
Any standard Spanish will allow you to communicate everywhere, even though every now and then a funny word comes up, but Spanish is Spanish everywhere. Regarding the Castilian accent, the only thing is the "th" sound of the C and Z, but do not forget that in Spanish, millions of people in the south pronounce these letters like in Latin America, and the rest of Spain understand them perfectly. The Castillian accent, nevertheless, will help you with your spelling.
P.D. I am from Spain, and I'm not the only one here.
When I first joined this site, I was a little concerned that it was too dominated by the influence of Spain, and had insufficient representation from Mexico (I live on the Pacific Coast of the US). For instance a swimming pool at this site is "piscina" not "alberca". As I have used the site, I have found that every time you really investigate anything, there are views from all over- Spain, Mexico, northern South America and Argentina- and if you ask something that is done differently in different places, you get a long thread discussing the differences. Gekkosan and Lazarus are particularly good at knowing a variety of different answers, and will point out how things are done differently in different places frequently. I have also discovered in the effort of learning a language, that I now want to know how it spoken everywhere, and have quit asking "how is that said in Mexico?". If I have to know 4 different words for "car" and some sense of who would use which- that's okay- one of the major pluses of learning to speak Spanish is that it is used by so many people in so many places that it opens up a good part of the world.
Here's the website Daphne referenced...
Real Academia Española
Daphne,
This is by no means, American Spanish. There are A L O T of native speakers here from everywhere. 
They are very helpful in helping we lowly non-natives 
speak properly. Join us on Skype or during an advance chat with the native speakers. You'll definitely see that "American Spanish" is not what they are speaking or what we are trying to speak. I hope this helps.
This seems mostly American Spanish to me. Have you checked out the Academia Real website, it might be helpful.
