How many types of Spanish are there?

This is one of the most common questions Spanish learners ask me all the time. The answer requires some research:

Latin American Spanish

This is the dialect of urban mainland Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and the majority of Central and South American countries. While there are differences in how Spanish is spoken amongst people in these countries, Latin American Spanish is usually referred to as thus in order to differentiate between it and the Spanish spoken in Spain.

The difference is similar to English as it is spoken in England vs the U.S.; U.S. English speakers can understand each other with little effort even though someone from the Midwest speaks very differently than a person from the Northeast or a person from the Southeast.

This Spanish was spoken in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was brought to the Americas by the early colonists.

Castilian

However, the Spanish of Madrid and of northern Spain, called Castilian, developed characteristics that never reached the New World. These include the pronunciation of "ci" and "ce" as "th." In Madrid, "gracias" (thank you) becomes "gratheas" (as opposed to "gras-see-as" in Latin America.)

Another difference is the use in of the word "vosotros" (you all, or you guys) as the informal form of "ustedes". Vosotros is only used in Spain.

Castilian sounds to Latin Americans much like British English sounds to U.S. residents.

Spanish from the Caribbean

The third major type of Spanish is spoken in the Caribbean, coastal areas of Latin America, and in some cases in southern Spain. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the accent in Seville, Cádiz, and other cities in Andalucia, in Southern Spain, began to change. Speakers began to drop the final "s" on words.

The settlers and traders of southern Spain took this dialect with them to the Caribbean and other coastal areas. Today Caribbean or "Lowland" Spanish is characterized by its relative informality, its rapid pace, and the dropping of "s" sounds, allowing people to talk more quickly.

Spaniards tend to be more language purists and are much more likely to be shocked at a lot of the "Spanglish" ("troque" for "truck", or "lonche" for "lunch") that has been developed in Latin America.

There are significant differences in vocabulary between regional varieties of Spanish, particularly within the domains food products, everyday objects, and clothes, and many Latin American varieties show considerable influence from Native American languages.

The language area where more differences can be found between the Spanish spoken in Spain and the one spoken in Latinamercia is the technical vocabulary.

In Latiamerican Spanish you can find words borrowed from English directly without translation. This does not happen in Spain, where every word has a translation into Spanish.

One clear example is the use of the word "e-mail" in Latinamerica instead of the translation “correo electrónico” which is used in Spain.

Despite the differences already explained, Spanish is only one language spoken by 417 million people in 21 countries. It is no surprise that there are variants based on geographical locations.