Fluency in Arabic has become one of the hottest career boosting skills of the 21st century. In 2008, the U.S. military began offering ROTC cadets up to $3,000 a year just to learn Arabic. This language boasts over 200 million speakers, distributed throughout the world. Most Arabic speakers live in Middle Eastern countries, Africa, Asia, and countries with Muslim populations. Mastering Arabic sounds will jumpstart your path to fluency.

Listen to introductory and intermediate sounds on practice files on sites like Arabic 2000 and Language Guide. These educational sites have free pronunciation exercises, pictures and text in English and Arabic.

Choose software downloads that will allow you to make customized multimedia Arabic study guides and flashcards. These programs work by converting Arabic text to speech. An open source program like Kacst Arabic Text-to-speech System (KATTSS) can read PDFs or scanned text that you have in your files.

Get PDF documents from Arabic language websites. This is a simple way to find practice files for your text-to-speech software. They also help you get used to recognizing the alphabet, although you may not be ready to use the written language immediately.

Visit major Arab corporation, educational, entertainment and government websites. Many have English language translations that will help you navigate the site. Look for videos and MP3 files that you can download or bookmark.

Listen to the spoken language by selecting highly rated YouTube videos that help users practice Arabic vocabulary. Alif BA TV, a children's educational content publisher, produced a popular video series, Learn Arabic Letters of the Alphabet. Their videos combine picture prompts with the spoken translation of the written Arabic words. The latest version of Real Player will automatically prompt you to download the video, if you want to save a local copy.

Keep going and practice with free podcasts. iTunes hosts several free courses, including one developed by the United States Peace Corps. These lessons have a transcript that you can follow during the podcast and use for reference. You will need to download the iTunes software, register and subscribe to the lessons. You can play the podcasts on your computer and listen while your work or surf. Some of the podcasts available on iTunes are downloadable.