The Arabic language has many dialects. The dialects are so diverse that even native speakers of Arabic may have difficulty understanding Arabs from neighbouring countries. For example Algerian dialect is one of the most difficult dialect for many countries, in contrast Egyptian dialect is one of the most easier dialect used in the Arabic world. The Egyptian cinema and music industry helped to make it very easy for so many (iam not Egyptian by the way), iam sure many will agree that Egyptian is easily understood. When learning Arabic is best to learn the classical Arabic (the language of the Qur'an) which has little in common with the many present-day dialects of Arabic. Nowadays Classical Arabic is not used in any country but it is the formal language for the news, speeches etc. even though classic Arabic not used, it will be understood anywhere in the Arabic world.
I have put lists of tips to make the learning of Arabic easy. Please keep this thread on the topic, if you have any tips please share them here. Any off topic posts will be deleted to make this thread easier to use.
• Start with learning the Arabic alphabetic and reading and writing (I will start a course here). Learning few words will not help you to pick the language.
• Learn the classical first, it will make better sense to pick another dialect later.
• Practice, practice, I can not stress enough how important that is, for people living in Dubai you have a perfect environment to practice. Do not be shy or embarrassed just use what you learned with others
• The best part, watch Arabic movies, if you have the Arabic Sat, you can see how diverse the dialects are but Egyptian cinema have a big collection to pick from. Watch the Arabic news as well.
• Music, again listen to the music get the lyrics in both Arabic and English. So you can hear the words and read them (that why, it is important to learn reading and writing).