Obviously they used to speak Latin, hence the name of their country, but what prompted the change to Spanish? My friend Oscar said he thinks it was because the people were having too hard a time doing math with Roman numerals. This kinda makes sense, because I can't even tell what year some movies and TV shows were made when they show the date with those letters. I can't even imagine trying to ADD letters or mutliply them and stuff.

Plus, Oscar is usually kinda full of crap, so I don't trust him on this.

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!