Decide which kind of Arabic you want to learn Modern Standard Arabic, Classical (Qur'anic) Arabic, or Colloquial Arabic. Decide which kind of Arabic you want to learn: Modern Standard Arabic. Unless your interest is confined to one particular country, the safest option is to learn a version of the classical language known as Modern Standard Arabic. MSA is used across the Arab World and is generally confined to writing and formal contexts: literature, newspapers, education, radio/television news programs, political speeches, etc. Classical (Qur'anic) Arabic. If your interest is more specific to Islamic or Medieval Arabic studies, a course in Qur'anic/Classical Arabic will meet your needs. It is the Arabic used in the Holy Qur'an, the Arabic of classical religious, intellectual, and legal texts, and the Arabic from which Modern Standard Arabic is based. Colloquial Arabic. If you are planning on living in the Arab World or dealing with a specific Arab region or country, Modern Standard Arabic on its own is unlikely to meet all your needs. Arabs speak regional dialects as their mother tongue, and the differences between dialects can be significant enough to cause mutual unintelligibility. Broadly speaking, there are five broad families of dialects, each with sub-dialects according to country, city, neighbourhood, and even religion: Gulf Arabic, Mesopotamian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Maghrebi Arabic. so now tell me what you want to learn :)