De viaje

Three words for a car, and which one you use places you geographically before you have finished the sentence.

Coche is Spain. Carro is most of Latin America and the Caribbean. Auto is the Southern Cone, particularly Argentina and Chile. All three are correct, all three are understood everywhere, and none of them is neutral.

This is the first place a frequency course has to make a choice, and it is worth saying plainly that any choice is a choice. You are not learning Spanish; you are learning a Spanish.

Going and coming are not where you think

Ir is to go, venir is to come, and Spanish draws the line differently from English.

Venir means movement towards the SPEAKER. So if someone calls you from the kitchen and you are on your way, English says I am coming and Spanish says voy - because you are going towards them, not towards yourself. Vengo would mean you are coming to where you already are.

Getting this wrong is not a disaster. It is just one of those small things that reads as translated rather than spoken.

llegar takes a

Llegar a Madrid. Always a, never en, and never nothing. Llegar on its own is fine when there is no destination: ya llegué, I have arrived.

Left and right, and why they arrive so late

Izquierdo is one of the least frequent words a beginner desperately needs, which is the central tension of a frequency-ordered course. It sits at rank several hundred while de and que crowd the first ten, and you cannot give directions without it.

Derecho earns its place twice over: it is right as a direction, right as in a legal right, and derecho as an adverb means straight ahead. Todo derecho is straight on. Which means a la derecha and derecho point in different directions, and you have to listen for the article.