David,
I disagree. The gender problem exists even for things since things in spanish have gender. House is female while cat is male. Department is male while class is female. Reading "Asignatura nuevo" is unnatural and looks like a typo. We should strive to get it "right".
Regarding locales, we should copy & paste as much as we can between spanish from Spain and latin amercian spanish, but there are differences. Some words are so uncommon among a particular group that I'm sure they would have problems understanding. For instance, while in spain a computer is usually called "El ordenador" in Latin America it is "La computadora" and most people not familiar with the former would have a hard time understanding just what an "ordenador" is.
Regards,
-Oscar
