Hebrew has virtually the exact same properties, and is quite simple to learn as it is extremely regular, and like all Semitic languages is based off a three-root system. In fact, in a number of conversations with my arab friends I'm stunned just how similar Hebrew and Arabic are (both in good and foul words) and in grammar.
That makes sense, as modern Hebrew is largely reconstructed ancient Hebrew with added words for things that were invented in the past several centuries. I don't think the people who reconstructed Hebrew would have gone out of their way to include foul words.
What is surprising is that the foul words were borrowed from Arabic, and not Yiddish or any of the other languages commonly spoken by the Jews who settled in Israel.
Israelis curse in a mix of Arabic, Russian, German, Polish, Yiddish and recently even English -- but at least at this point in time, Arabic is the dominant source.
There's a decent selection of biblical foul words to use, by the way, and many are in use.
And the reference to a penis is interesting in its own way - at least three times in the last 200 years, a new "safe" reference, and the reference took over as the improper foul word. The one in the last 50 years is literally equivalent to "the f" (as in, "the f word") was spawned verbs equivalent to "I will f you" -- the emerging noun, "זיון", is pronounced exactly the same as the f*cking Microsoft iPod competitor.
Heh, just because it's regular doesn't make it easy to learn. But you are right that the two languages are very closely related.
The main differences I can think of is that Hebrew doesn't go quite as crazy with broken plurals, there's no diglossia, and of course the writing system isn't so pretty.
I don't know either language, but Modern Hebrew's regularity may be due to the fact that it was constructed (or reconstructed) less than 150 years ago.
It was reconstructed based on ancient writing, so a speaker of modern Hebrew can read text written thousands of years ago with full fluency after learning a few additional vocabulary words (mainly nouns).
The structure of the language and it's grammar rules has not changed. Even though the language was not used for regular conversation, it was still studied and spoken for the entire time, so was never lost.
