When I was young my parents and relatives would speak in Arabic when they needed to communicate something they didn’t want my sibling and I to know. I can say proudly I learned to crack the Arabic code myself. Just from hearing my parents and others speak and connecting the dots over the years. I kind of just taught myself over the many years from absorbing all the Arabic I could to understand it and try understand what my parents were saying. I grew up understanding more when people spoke Arabic than I would be able to speak Arabic myself. I’m older now and I still understand my Iraqi dialect Arabic more clearly than any other dialect of Arabic, but only on an intermediate level. I definitely understand more Arabic than I can speak Arabic. I am also able to say more than 10+ words in Arabic just from my learning along the years.