Disadvantage 1: Hebrew isn't Spanish

... or, for that matter, any other language with which we Indo-European speakers are even vaguely conceptually familiar. This was a strategic decision. Hebrew is different from Spanish (so often in America the go-to "learn a foreign language" language. There's nothing wrong with this, but there are, in fact, thousands of other languages to learn and enjoy) or any other language most of us would study in school. It's also unlikely that most people have considered a study of a language as exotic and foreign as Hebrew. There are a few that are arguably as foreign (Chinese, Arabic, Russian), but they are all also far more useful than Hebrew. But back to that in a moment.

What are the most fundamental, immediately noticeable differences? For one, Hebrew is a Semitic language, and like almost all Semitic languages (aside from Maltese), it uses an alphabet entirely different from English. It is also written from right to left. Like its Semitic cousins, it does not specifically denote vowels as characters; rather, these sounds are represented by diacritics or vowel marks, which is another very foreign concept to the English speaker.

I've done a nice job of avoiding any and all study or preemptive analysis of the language, so I'm not sure how its grammatical structure varies, how they conjugate their verbs, how they handle modifiers, etc. But I do know (or seem to remember) that like its cousin Arabic, Hebrew verbs have gender (a rare concept to begin with, and dually foreign to us English speakers since hardly anything in English has gender, much less our verbs). As I recall, Hebrew also has a dual verb form; English only has singular and plural, but Hebrew denotes when the subject specifically consists of two people. Nice, but just one more unique thing. In addition to that (and this is something I think would be very useful; Chinese has it as well, but it's very rarely used), Hebrew has an inclusive and exclusive first person plural verb. This in English would be "we go" or "we are going." When saying this to someone in English, it is not clear (without context) whether the speaker is including the listener or not. Note the difference between:

"Don't forget: we're going to the movies at 7 pm tomorrow." (This sentence includes the listener, because you are speaking to them and including them in the "we." This is inclusive)

"We're going to eat. I'm sorry you can't make it." (This "we" denotes the speaker and other people, but does not include the listener. This is exclusive).

[Think of the social awkwardness that could be avoided by tactfully and grammatically saying "We're going to dinner" and clearly implying the listener is not invited.]

Those are about the only things I know of Hebrew grammar. Suffice it to say, though, that as Americans, our familiarity with foreign language does not extend much [if at all] beyond our Germanic roots or Romance neighbors. This means that many of the fundamental concepts of Hebrew will be new. This is to say that in most cases, you will have a much greater head start in your foreign language experience (learning an Indo-European language) than this project will present, and it's one area in which we've decided to stack the cards against ourselves.