I never heard of Belize before I got this new job. I work with a lot of Belizeans, Panamanians, and people from the Caribbean. When I looked up Belize, it said it was an English speaking country but my co workers(3 of them) are from Belize, and they speak Spanish with the rest of the Spanish speaking people at my job. Granted, they sound Jamaican when they speak English but I never knew they spoke Spanish. Please explain how, or why?..LOL

Castilian? Latin American Spanish? Caribbean Spanish? What accent is best for an American to learn?

I'm copyediting the Closed Captioning of a math video, to wit, the Spanish-translated text for a math video.

The translator wrote "computador" (without the "a" at the end), but the dictionary shows "ordenador"--which is used mainly in Spain, I think.

However, the video makers are catering to the Spanish-speaking students of the US and Caribbean. They have instructed us not to "overcorrect" with textbook "Spain-Spanish" terms. We have to use the regional words of Mexico, US-raised Spanish-speaking students from Puerto Rico, Dominican republic, etc. My cousins in México use "computadora." But is that what Puerto Ricans and Dominicans use predominantly too? I've never heard my cousins say "ordenador," nor did any of my Caribbean-Spanish speaking students in Boston (where the video is made) ever use that word. Any advice?

I had fun correcting "peas" in a video once--everybody had a different word for it. I wound up using the Spain-Spanish word "guisantes" for it!

How would you best classify the varieties or styles of speaking Spanish In the Western Hemisphere, i.e., would it be Caribbean (or would you separate by specific countries like PR and DR/RD, Central American, Latin American. Would you distinguish the Spanish spoken by Argentinians separately? Distinguish the way Mexicans speak Spanish from other countries in Latin America?