I'm completely new, played a couple of times, but don't know anything about the console. I guess what I want/need to know for the moment is how do I chat in the game?

Thanks

Take a look at the settings / input dialog you will find an area ' communicate' there with two binds:
t for public chat
r and y for team chat

Just press the key, enter your message and press enter to send it, or escape to abort the message.. Thats like the default keys for about each game out there
Public chat will go to everyone playing, team chat just to your teammates when playing a team game.

Awesome, thanks!