The U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute ranks Arabic as one of the top 4 most difficult languages to learn for English speakers right up there with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Plus every Arabic-speaking country has its own very different dialect of Arabic, making it even harder to learn. So recently I accepted the challenge and spent 16 hours learning a colloquial form of Gulf Arabic with a Sudanese Dubaian tutor, and then I hit the streets of New York City’s Arabic neighborhoods which contain Arabic speakers from all over the Middle East. This video is the first time I’ve ever tried speaking Arabic with people in real life, and it was an incredible experience exploring these Arabic markets and restaurants in NYC and chatting with locals. If you’d like to check out some of the markets and restaurants featured in the video, some of my favorites are:
This AMAZING Yemeni restaurant Arth Aljanatain (seriously, so good): https://www.yelp.com/biz/arth-aljanatain-bronx
Oriental Pastry & Grocery, get the baklava!!! https://www.yelp.com/biz/oriental-pastry-and-grocery-brooklyn
