If you took Arabic as a single language, it would be the sixth most spoken language in the world. There are a few different dialects that make a simple definition quite difficult. The term 'Arabic' comprises three variants: the modern standard Arabic, colloquial Arabic and Classical Arabic. This makes it difficult to learn, and even Arabic translation by a native has to be undertaken carefully.
Classical Arabic is what is found in the Qur'an and is the basis for many of the forms of spoken Arabic. However, most writing is in Modern Standard Arabic: magazines, newspapers, books, official documents and educational documents are all in this form. Strangely, this form is not used in speech all that often, but if you were to learn Arabic script, this would probably be the most useful.
Written Arabic is visually complex. There are a number of very similar symbols that differ only slightly, such as with small lines or dots, and added to this there are symbols which represent sounds. Then there's the fact that it's read and written from left to right, and from top to bottom.
Consequently, learning even basic Arabic is quite difficult. One difficulty is that letters can change shape depending on where they are written in a word. For example, 22 of the 28 Arabic letters have 4 variants. This means that in written Arabic, they can appear in different ways depending on where they are used in the sentence.
The variants mean that the writing is different if the letters are standing alone, as the first letter in a word, inside the word between other letters, or if they are the last letter in a word. They are known as initial, isolated, medial, and final letters. Then there are 6 other letters that never join the following letter, even when they're inside a word.
The variants of the letters mean it's probably best to learn one set of letters at a time. This will alleviate any confusion that would have been caused if you'd tried to learn the entire alphabet in one go. You should also take the time to learn the cursive script of Arabic which can be hard because of these variants. The best way to learn is by practicing copying the script.
Another point to note is that vowels don't always have actual letters as such. There are only letters for long vowels - 'a', 'i' and 'u'. Short vowels are denoted through marks above and below consonants. Sometimes the marks for short vowels do not appear in texts - for example they aren't always included in newspapers and magazines.
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