Everyone seems to have an opinion about how to learn Arabic best. “GPA is the only way.” “Doing Arabic in college is worthless.” “You’ll never learn unless you go to language school.” The opinions never stop!

That can make it intimidating to know where to start because you’re afraid of taking the wrong step. Of course I have my own opinion of what methods are better or worse, but my biggest piece of advice is just to start! Are you wanting to come to the Gulf but the only Arab you know is a Syrian neighbor? Start off saying hi to her and seeing if you can learn from her! Do you plan to go to language school but that’s still a few months off? Start taking some online tutoring, even from someone of a different nationality! Do you want to learn to talk to neighbors but your job takes up too much time to take classes? Start learning greetings from YouTube videos!

Don’t be scared that you’ll mess up your dialect by learning a different one first. Arabic is a beautiful and logical—even mathematical—language, but it does take a lot of investment to learn. So the best advice I have is just to get started, wherever and however you can. Even if you only have 5 minutes a day, it’s worth the investment.