Well, maybe he meant that very few people are actually really good at formal arabic? I know I suck at it even though I'm Lebanese and it's supposed to be my mother tongue. Arabic speakers tend to have a colloquial form of Arabic that they speak which is a much simplified version of the formal Arabic language.
I would say the closest analogy is Lebanese is to Arabic what French is to Latin. Clearly derived from it, but very different and much simpler.
300 experts is definitely a very low estimate though. Should definitely be higher.
