Language Facts: 

• Likely the only new letter to be learned is the Ñ/ñ, that makes the sound like “n” in “onion”. 
• Dialects can different significantly in terms of pronunciation and some vocabulary. Most learning materials will split between Spain and Latin America. 
•  Spanish pronunciation shouldn’t give any huge problems. Only 5 vowel sounds, and the written language is very close to the spoken language. 
• Nouns can be either feminine or masculine. The patterns to classifying between the gender is fairly consistent, with few exceptions .
• Spanish has an informal you (tú) and formal you (usted). Spanish in Spain will have an informal plural you (vosotros), but this is not present in Latin America. While not in most textbooks, many countries use “vos”, as well, with differing levels of informality . 
•  Verbs are conjugated for person, tense, mood, and number. Pronouns can be dropped where the conjugation makes the pronoun clear. The subjunctive mood is a big feature of the language and will take some study to be able to use correctly. 
• Basic word order is Subject-Verb-Object. 
• Vocabulary will be close to other Romance languages, especially Portuguese and Italian. ~10% of the vocabulary come from Arabic loanwords, due to Moorish presence in the Iberian Peninsula. Latin American Spanish can have many local loanwords from indigenous languages.