>
>I went to Spain and I've met people from Spain and my experience has been that they speak better Spanish than most (if only they would drop that th! *G*). Also my experience in El Salavador, Nicaragua, Chile, Bolivia (La Paz is all I can talk about there) and Costa Rica was similar.

I've heard, and I don't know how apochryphal this is, that in Spain they pronounce "c" as "th" because it became fashionable some time back, because the king of Spain had a lisp. It's not pronounced thus in the Americas because they were colonised before the lisping king's reign. Sounds daft, I know! :-)

>
>I sometimes wonder how any non-native English speakers can understand us in the South. Even listening to radio talk shows it is embarrassing to hear southerners speak. You very often hear things similar to:
>
>"We was..."
>"He be..."
>"We run down to the store..."

You want to listen to English football (soccer) stars talking to the media. It's like the've had to go to "degrammarizing" lessons: "At the end of the day, it weren't me wot done it." "He's not as fit as wot he was."
"What was you doing?"