Learning it yourself is quite different from having a teacher really especially when it comes to Arabic... I mean learning the alphabet itself needs a teacher who can tell you why the letters are grouped like that or what's the deal with the dots, someone who can explain and connect thing together instead of you spending a lot of timing trying to figure it out on your own

There are two ways you can have a conversation with someone; using a silly phrasebook or by actually knowing the language lol. Now one of the features in Arabic is that we can talk quite a lot without even using a single verb so making basic sentences is kinda easy lol... still I can't give you a number because I don't know how much Arabic you know :) a trial lesson is probably gonna help you decide if you wanna give Arabic another shot but with a teacher this time