Dubai-based Indian expat Qammaruddeen Najmuddeen built the UAE Golden Visa Arabic learning platform letsgoarabic.com from a single shameful moment in a Sharjah courtroom — and in 2021 he received a UAE Golden Visa for it.
A Sharjah Courtroom Incident That Changed Everything
In 2011, Najmuddeen accompanied his sister and brother-in-law to a Sharjah family court for marriage registration. When the judge asked a routine question, his brother-in-law confused two similar Arabic words — zawaj (marriage) and zawja (wife) — and the whole courtroom burst out laughing. Najmuddeen, dressed in a traditional Emirati dishdasha and prayer cap, felt the embarrassment acutely: here he was, born and raised in the UAE, yet unable to understand the basics of the language around him.
That moment became his turning point.
From Twitter Account to a Full Arabic Learning Platform
Najmuddeen had grown up watching his father deal fluently with Arab clients, but never pushed himself to learn the language. After the court incident, he channelled his shame into action. He started small — a Twitter account called @GoArabic where he posted simple Arabic phrases. Some users mocked his broken Arabic at first, but the idea kept growing.
He evolved the concept into a more structured project: @WeSpeakArabic, which recruited local Arabic-speaking curators to contribute content weekly. Within three years, the platform had attracted more than 60 curators and grown to over 6,200 followers, posting more than 1,000 phrases aimed at both Arab and non-Arab speakers.
His first curator was Hanan Alfardan, Managing Director at Ramsa, an Emirati dialect institute — a sign of the credibility the project quickly earned.
What letsgoarabic.com Offers
The Twitter effort eventually became a permanent website at letsgoarabic.com. Najmuddeen deliberately avoided classical Arabic grammar in favour of colloquial, immediately usable phrases — the kind a busy expat parent or professional can pick up and deploy the same day.
The site organises phrases into four practical categories: greetings, time, calendar months and days, and fruits. Each entry comes with a related image, an English translation, and an audio recording in a local Arabic dialect. Sample phrases include yetraba fi izkum ("may he grow up in your support") and sabah al malal ("good boring morning") — the kind of warm, culturally fluent expressions that textbooks skip.
By the time the platform was well established, Najmuddeen himself had progressed from zero spoken Arabic to mastering roughly 70% of the language.
UAE Golden Visa for Artistic Talent
In 2021, the UAE awarded Najmuddeen a UAE Golden Visa under the artistic talent category, recognising his contribution to Arabic language education. The ten-year residency visa acknowledged that his work — bridging communities through a shared language — carried genuine cultural value.
What's Next for the Platform
Najmuddeen wants to expand letsgoarabic.com to cover more regional Arabic dialects, so learners anywhere in the Arab world can find content suited to the dialect they need. His goal remains the same as when he started: help people speak Arabic with confidence, starting with whatever they already know, one phrase at a time.
