Error logging?

I am trying to diagnose an issue with mail but can’t figure out what’s going wrong. I’m a newbie to WordPress and PHP. The email problem causes no visible errors from the site but I know that there has to be one that’s being suppressed.

Is there some kind of error log that is generated when the site encounters problems that I can take a look at to figure out what is really going on? It’s very frustrating to just keep trying things without having a clue where it’s broken.

Thanks!