Learn Spanish (Spain): ¿Es española la chica nueva?

In Spanish yes/no questions, word order is very flexible. While you could match the English order and say ¿Es la chica nueva española?, it is actually more natural in Spanish to group the verb (es) and the detail you are asking about (española) together, saving the longer subject (la chica nueva) for the end of the sentence.

Why does the sentence start with an upside-down question mark?

Spanish questions always begin with an inverted question mark (¿) and end with a standard one (?). Because Spanish questions can have the exact same word order as normal statements, this opening mark tells you right away that you need to raise your pitch at the end of the sentence to make it sound like a question.

Why isn't española capitalized here like "Spanish" is in English?

In Spanish, words for nationalities and languages are never capitalized unless they are the very first word of a sentence. Because it is in the middle of the question, española stays lowercase.

Why do almost all the words in this sentence end in the letter "a"?

This is a great example of gender agreement. The main noun is chica (girl), which is feminine. Therefore, the word for "the" (la), the nationality (española), and the adjective "new" (nueva) must all take their feminine forms, which typically end in an "a" to match the noun.