CHAT: query: where to start?

Hello,
I've been semi-lurking since I got on this list.  I suppose you might
call me a beginning conlanger; I printed out something like 150 pages of
conlang material from the web for personal reference this summer!

Anyway--I've been working on an ancestor language for a language in a
story (how's that for too many prepositional phrases?).  I read an
article on Arabic morphological structure, and thought, What a neat
idea!  So I've been using three-consonant morphemes, with affixes to form
root verbs, adjectives, etc.

However, I *don't* know any Arabic except "salaam."  :-/  My question
was, should I hold off on this until I can learn some Arabic in the
nebulous future, and stick to the languages I know something about?
(Hindbrain Korean, some idea of Japanese grammatical structure but not
fluent in any sense, beginning German, a couple weeks' worth of Latin,
and some French.  Too many Indo-European, darnit.)  Or should I just try
to learn as much as I can about how Arabic works?  (I borrowed a couple
features from other languages.)

Sorry if this is a dumb question.  :-/

Yoon Ha Lee