No Stupid Questions

It's not an autobus, it's la guagua

It's not un banana, it's un gineo

It's not automovil, it's El carro

I can keep going.

Dominican here so my Spanish includes...

Que vaina

Un molote

Un mojonera

Mojiganga

Sana sana colito de rana

Do you mean New Mexican Spanish?

Thy is the super formal form of the conjugation, vosotros is the colloquial form of ustedes.

Tu-vosotros. Usted-ustedes. You-yall. Thou-thy.

You have it backwards, it's the Latin countries which sound super formal and awkward to us spaniards.

I remember this, after I was told I was learning France French I was a bit confused. Why wouldn't we be learning Quebecois?

To be fair, I was a bad student so I wasn't actually learning either...

And in Switzerland we have to learn quebeccan French. And so the circle closes.

(we train it at the end when we train understanding non-standard pronounciations)

When I was in school in the 1970s it was because they couldn't get French teachers from Quebec. The youth wanted to stay and build a sovereign Quebec. So they imported French teachers from France and I speak like a French Duke.

I don't know what we you're referring to, but in the part of central Ontario where my nephew attends school, the French immersion schools are most definitely teaching Quebecois French.

I tried speaking real French with my nephew and he reacted as if I was a space alien.

Vos-conjugations are not a thing in spain though? You mean tu-conjugations?

Kinda the same here in Nevada. Our Spanish teacher explained them briefly but told us we didn't need to learn them, didn't test us on them, so on.

And then when you actually spend any time in a place where Spanish is the first language, you start to understand that, like any language, there's the academic form (commonly taught to non-native speakers as a second or third etc. language), and then there's the local version, complete with all the colloquialisms and slang and unique pronunciations. In Argentina, the double-L (which school taught me makes a "y" sound, "ella" being pronounced basically "ey-ya") is commonly pronounced as more of a soft "J" sound ("ella" becomes "ey-jha"). As far as my (admittedly limited) knowledge goes, that's really not common outside of Argentina. And then in Bolivia, especially among native descendants (Quechua and Aymara predominantly), the double-r (which school taught me is one of two conditions when you roll the R with a tongue trill) is more commonly pronounced almost like a "zh" ("herramienta" becomes "hezhamienta"). Again, not common outside of Bolivia. Spain has that classic "Barthelona" lisp, and uses the "vosotros" pronoun where most South American Spanish speakers would probably use "ustedes" (basically "y'all" vs. "esteemed plural second persons"). And that's not even getting into which verb tenses are used most widely in different regions. There's like 14 or 15 specific verb tenses in Spanish to English's 7, and in school I was taught to use specific ones to communicate effectively; then I went and spent two months in Bolivia pretty much never using past perfect or predicate, instead using past imperfect for 95% of interactions, only using past perfect with other folks que hablan español como segunda lengua, or in a few very specific interactions where more detail or specificity was required than would be so in common, everyday interactions. [Edit for spelling]

Spaniard living in the US here to clarify how our language works. Spaniards are the best at speaking their own language by definition. We make the language, and we decide how it evolves. When you say many Spaniards suck at speaking their own language, I think you are getting confused with the many dialects that exist within the Spain. Some dialects, while being perfectly and dramatically correct, are very hard for non-native speakers to understand. Pronunciation of letters may change from dialect to dialect, but the grammar is basically the same.

The authority that sets the Spanish language grammar rules (Real Academia Española - RAE) is in Spain, and it's rules only apply to the "standard" Spanish dialect spoken in Spain, which is also known as Castillian. However, there are multiple other dialects of Spanish within Spain (and multiple other languages that are not Spanish - Galego, Catalan, Euskera, etc). Other countries that speak other Spanish dialects choose if they want to follow or not the rules set by the RAE, and many Spanish dialects do not follow those rules. Some Spanish speaking countries have their own organizations to define their Spanish dialects. There are dialects of Spanish that are very different from the original Castillian Spanish. For example, listen to Argentinian Spanish, and compare it to Castillian Spanish. The difference is noticeable even for non-Spanish speakers. They also use a slightly different grammar.

Same language but with huge differences world wide, as languages tend to do. Believe a person whom lived in Mexico for over 2 decades, Mexican Spanish is NOT the exact same. It's mostly similar and you'll be able to understand but it will be immediately obvious that it's very different.

I watch Spain Spanish movies and regularly have trouble understanding it all

I once stayed in a youth hostel rural Quebec and had a really weirdly hostile reception from people there, despite dredging up my very best schoolgirl French to try and make conversation. Turns out they thought I was from Ontario. When I revealed I was a Kiwi they were all suddenly very friendly. Too late!

In the same way that Americans speak English.

Sure, their language is mutual intelligible with English, but if an Englishman comes over here and asks for some chips, they're going to get a bag of crisps. They'll mess up verb conjunction on a bunch of collective nouns.

And bless the souls of my Australian mates who come here and call everyone a cunt.