NTC's Dictionary of Latin American Spanish

This Latin American Dictionary is a very interesting resource and when I say interesting I refer to diversity and somewhat controversial comments by the other reviewers. I certainly can understand their point of view but would like to give my perspective. The book does clarify meaning and explain the lexical difference of words from country to country. There are ample examples of this throughout the book. Depending on your background this book can be either enlightening, too regional, or too diverse but all in all it will explain what certain everyday words mean that may be common to a group of people and foreign to another just because of their regional differences. One aspect I find totally sad is the influence of English in Spanish vocabulary which is evidenced by the many examples provided in the book. However, a refreshing factor is that many of these words that originated and are used predominantly by North American Spanish speakers who have fusioned the two languages together have not yet been approved by the RAE (Real Academia de la lengua Espanola). Therefore, with that in mind I resist from discrediting the words (English slang) that are in the dictionary. Personally I refuse to use a slang anglicized word when there is an existing word in Spanish. Keeping all this in mind you can get some good information about the meaning of words and colloquial phrases that are detailed in this dictionary. It's not an exhaustive resource and certainly there are much better ones on the market. (3.5 star rating)