So after spending 30+ years in the UAE, I've finally decided to learn some Arabic. Unlike other Arabian countries, English and Urdu have a very strong presence here and people like me just never felt the need to learn Arabic.
Of course its a massive asset, you can get by without knowing a word in Arabic as 99% of UAE's non-Arab expats do everyday, but you can't excel in the core governmental departments without knowing Arabic.
Unlike in most other countries, in UAE anything governmental is always the best. Like Government hospitals, Government Universities (not so much for schools) and even Government run organizations. They give the biggest pay checks too.
Now the CDs I got for learning are very good. The instructor is some western accent woman but she explains it very nicely. The emphasis is on spoken Arabic (I can read Arabic obviously because of the Quran) and getting you conversant really fast. Although the instructor mentions that she's teaching Egyptian Arabic, since that's understood everywhere. I don't know how true that is. She says that since the cinema is mostly Egyptian, all Arabs have been exposed to Egyptian Arabic thoroughly.
Coming from an Urdu background, I picked up a lot of the foundation things really fast like grammar rules.
So has anyone else tried to learn Arabic and what were their experiences?
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