European Spanish, European Portuguese, Argentine Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese ?

Question

I'm a Chinese, Mandarin speaker, living in northern China, I know clearly that, Spanish, together with Portuguese, is quite useful and practical especially in Latin America, but I'd like to confirm which language is universally recognized as a better choice, if Spanish is, which kind of Spanish is better, European style, or Latin American style (it also includes several sorts of Latin American Spanish), and if Portuguese is a better choice, then may I say that Brazilian style seems more useful or sounds more beautiful than European Portuguese. Would you kindly help me choose only either of them, not both of them, or even all of them. Actually I've got 4 textbooks on hand, one is about Eur.Spanish, the other is about Lat.Spanish (but I don't know which kind of Lat.Spanish), the third is about Eur.Portuguese, and the last one is about Brazilian Portuguese, perhaps I'll have to choose only one of them to learn on my own, but would you please make suggestions to help me decide on which I should start learning of all these kinds. Thank you very much!

Answer 1

Well obviously mandarin is the #1 language and then next is spanish, so spanish beats portuguese. i would learn latin american style since there are more latin american countries than the one european one...spain. besides, spain itself has various dialects of spanish so...yeah. lol.

Answer 2

Well, in general I think that Spanish would be more useful. With that said, both are pretty similar. I mean, I speak Latin American Spanish and can perfectly understand somebody who speaks Spanish from Spain. There are only differences in a pronunciation of the "c" and "z" sounds. There are also differences in vocabulary, however that happens with different countries of Latin America as well. I don't think it really matters which you learn because you will be understood either way. Don't try learning a certain style, such as Argentinian or Chilean Spanish just yet, wait until you have the basics that every country uses first. Good luck!