The global reach and cultural richness of Spanish are well within the reach of English speakers, due to shared Latin roots, similar alphabets, and numerous cognates. The key hurdles? Pronunciation and gender. After all, if you can be understood and you use the right article, you'll be more credible—even as a beginner.
Regular practice with a patient native speaker is the best way to ensure that when you say "perro" (dog) or "casa" (home), it doesn't come out as "pero" (but) or "caza" (hunting). Several sounds in Spanish simply don't exist in English. Examples include the trilled rr, the soft d between vowels, the near identical pronunciation of b and v, and the "clear" versus "dark" l.
Whereas English has no grammatical gender, every noun in Spanish is masculine or feminine. Adjectives, articles, pronouns, and even some verb forms must match accordingly. Try to learn gender in chunks—article and noun—rather than just words. Memorize "la mesa" and "el coche," rather than just "mesa" and "coche." It helps to use a color-coding system in your notes: write masculine nouns in one color, and feminine in another.
A third challenge is the conjugation of verbs which change form based on subject, tense, mood, and aspect. Pay attention to verb endings: "hablo" means I speak; "hablas," you speak. You'll find that the subjunctive mood—"If he were winning, he would be more satisfied"—is used far more frequently in Spanish.
Spanish pronouns are often attached to infinitives, gerunds, and affirmative commands (e.g.: "Dímelo" (tell me). Articles can be definite ("el," "la," "los," "las") and indefinite ("un," "una," "unos," "unas"), and there are a richer set of demonstratives ("este," "ese," "aquel") to contend with, along with their gender and number variants. Again, when learning a new noun, always learn its article with it. Practice the demonstrative series in a near/ far table to internalize the spatial nuance.
The good news is that Spanish follows the subject-verb-object order of English: "Alexander fue a la escuela" means Alexander went to school. However, adjectives usually come after the noun: "Alexander asistió a una escuela difícil" (Alexander went to a difficult school).
You may also take comfort in that Spanish is full of familiar words. Many are true cognates, although the use of others may result in embarrassment, if not "embarazo" (which means pregnancy).