Sala de estar
I guess I just want to know if it's perfectly acceptable to use sala instead of sala de estar..? ALL my workbooks etc. only use 'sala'...but a native Spanish speaker tells me to only use sala de estar. I know there are a lot of different ways to say something and it also depends on regions etc. However, I find it confusing and really aggravating that educational workbooks etc. often use less popular vocabulary. Thanks! mb
3 Answers
Sala is actually used with a lot of words to mean different kinds of rooms,,
like
sala de clase.. class room (aula).
sala de justicia/tribunal .. court room.
sala de maternidad .. maternity ward..
sala de conciertos .. concert hall.
sala de esperar ,, waiting room ,, and so on and so forth..
so to avoid confusion the native must have advised you to use the complete "sala de estar" although even if you use "sala" the meaning would still be understood correctly from the context... for example ... if i say ... anoche platicabamos en la sala hasta madrugada ... now here the context makes it clear that i was chatting with friends or family until late night/early morning ... obviously I wont be doing that in a courtroom or classroom etc..
Even though "living" is surprisingly listed in the RAE, to my ear it sounds horrible - obviously an accepted spanglish word.
As previously mentioned, with adecuate context just sala is sufficient when talking about the living room of a house, but both sala / sala de estar are correct.
If you want to keep it short or you don't want to repeat the same word over and over, a synonim would be simply 'el living', which to the best of my knowledge is now regarded as proper Spanish, though of course it blew over from English. 
