The differences between spanish from Spain and spanish from Latin America?

[Efrahinu19]

I've heard someone from Spain speak spanish recentlyand some of it I couldn't quite understand. There was alot that I did get but for the part that I didn't, it was words I haven't really heard before. Can some tell me why that is?

[MyDigitalpoint]

Spanish from Spain is known as Castilian (Castellano) and is the mother tongue of all other Spanish variations.

However this is the only Spanish with a heavily affected accent only used in Spain, where the language include a grammatical construction that is in disuse in all other speaking countries.

Even though Castilian Spanish is understood anywhere where Spanish is spoken, as long as the speaker doesn't use regionalisms that are not of common use.

In example a Spaniard may refer to a "paleto" when he means "a person from the provinces" usually used as derogative than means ignorant.

However paleto is a word not used (as far as I know) anywhere where Spanish is spoken and an Spanish language student may consider it as the male form of "paleta" (lollipop) which makes no sense because a lollipop has no genre.

Usually it's believe that the Spanish that is best understood is Mexican Spanish, but as long as you listen to someone who doesn't use slang (caló).

"Calo" is also a sort of Spanish dialect used in the Andalucia region, which is hard to understand even by Spain-born people.

[petesede]

One of the biggest differences you will quickly notice is the different forms of the word ´you´ and the way verbs are conjugated around that form.  It is one of the first ways that a person from central america will know that a speaker is from Spain. In central america, we use Tu, Usted and Ustedes... in Spain they use Vos more.

The other major differences are words that were ´invented´ after Central America was colonized, mainly technological advances and verbs associated with them.  Words like car, television, computer  have different versions because they were not brought to Central American from Spain directly.  But even though the same word is not commonly used in both places, it would be recognized if someone from Spain was talking about their television.