There aren't such a big differences between the spanish talked in South America or the one talked in the Iberian Peninsula. If you learn the spanish used in one of this places, you will undrestand almost everything of the other, and the phrases and idioms that could be new, will be easy to catch for you. Besides, they can explain it to you when you are there. I hope it was useful. Wish you luck!

Hey Lucy, I studied Spanish for about a year before moving to Colombia. I had the same thoughts/worries as you about which country to focus on. What I've found through my time here is that now I can also understand more Spanish from the other SA countries, and from Spain as well. So every country has different vocab and slang, but ultimately it's all the same language - Spanish. Get the basics of the language down, and then whichever country's Spanish you choose, you'll still be able to understand the Spanish from other countries.

I have lived in many paises donde se habla español. Although some have different words for the same thing, Spanish is the same all over the world. Just learn basic Spanish and when you go to specific countrys you will learn their idioms and specific words, but learn and concentrate on basic Spanish. You will do fine!,

I have the same problems when learning Spanish. If you are in an area where you will be more proned to communicate with people from South America, pick one country or two and stick to learning from those. At the university, I was taught Spanish tht was more geared toward Spain, but the professor was great in that he teaches us some of the phrases in other country, as well. Stick to only a few and in the future, should you plan to travel to a country, then, you can start picking up more of their phrases and ways of communicating.

I think your problem comes from you are Chinese and you have Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese. But we don't have so big differences in Spanish. Actually the Mandarin and Cantonese differences are more comparable to differences between Portuguese and Spanish.