(Part 2) Best conversation etiquette guides according to redditors

There's a section in this book that covers how to order at most locations. It's a great book to have along on trips because it's thorough, small, and fits easily in your bag or pocket.

I tend to run into this problem with Chinese. What I've found works is to tell my interlocutor, using all the marks of politeness I can, "I'm sorry, and I know this may be unusual, and I hope it's not inconvenient, but culturally I'm accustomed to...yadda yadda yadda...can you please help me understand?" I frame it in terms of being embarrassed that my Chinese is bad (which then puts them in the position of helping me because they otherwise make me lose face).

After a while, if you've built rapport, the person will actually help you with others by 'translating' what they're saying with subtext. I occasionally hear "shuaige doesn't understand you're meaning; it's American culture. Shuaige, did you understand? She's really trying to ask you X."

EDIT: relevant work in linguistics

Simply put, no. It's far too overpriced and, like others said, little more than fancy-looking flashcards. And you can get better flashcards that actually work to fit your memory by using a Spaced Repetition System like Anki (which is available for free and lets you download shared flashcard decks for free). As for the whole learning as a baby thing, that's not true. They don't expose you to pure listening in the language for a whole year and a half before you attempt to say something.

My recommendation, as a person who studies thirteen different languages: if you want to learn a second language, get a good course book with audio. I've yet to study Italian, although it's on my to-do list for later this year and I can already read a good amount of it since I'm a student or speaker of four other Romance languages. Here are three good courses:

• Teach Yourself Italian, from the very good Teach Yourself series,
  
• Colloquial Italian, published by Routledge, a highly respected publisher, especially when it comes to linguistic materials, and
  
• FSI Italian FAST (Familiarization And Short-term Training), available for free since it's in the public domain. Expect great efficiency from this course, especially since it was developed for people such as diplomats and the like.
  
  I wish you good luck, and remember: learning a new language should not be expensive. Anything that seems like too good of a deal in terms of results (like Rosetta Stone teaching you "naturally" or a product that promises fluency) should always be something to be regarded skeptically. It isn't impossible to teach yourself a lot of a language in a short period of time, like three months, but it'll require lots of dedication.
  
  Another idea: you might be able to sell your copy of Rosetta STone online, like on Craigslist, for some good revenue to buy a decent Italian course :)

Not much resources. Most people learn Indonesian as it have more resources but most native Malay can't understand it completely.

My post from a while back -

Material are scarce if you compare to Japanese or Chinese but you can get to conversational level.

Many free links are available >here<

But more proper material for English speaker is not available unless you buy them (check used books at Abebooks or library copy). There are TY Malay, the cheap AW Hamilton old book or that poorly designed Colloquial Malay

I think with the first two book, you should jump to cartoons or drama. Both use simple conversational Malay. Almost all should have English sub.

• Upin Ipin with subs
  
• Tonton (like Netflix of Malaysia)
  
  It takes a long time but if you religiously check dictionary, then you can make it within a couple of months (not days)
  
  Also, visit HelloTalk or lang 8. Hundreds of native will help you because we don't match with anyone else as everyone likes to learn more popular languages.
  
  If you want to read children's book or novels, you can but they actually use advanced Malay that no one use ever even if you talk to official government personal. It mostly in literature.
  > example of book
  
  Most books are sold through Facebook or social media and centralized market for books can be hard to find but plentiful in local book store Now u can subscribe cheap Malay books from a website call NovelPlus as low as USD3/mo
  
  For music, I recommend the following artist as they have great voice - Siti Nurhaliza, Sheila Majid, M. Nasir, Ning Baizura. For rock, Bunkface, Search and Hujan are my favorite.

Maybe try this-

https://www.amazon.com/Language-English-Chinese-Speakers-Essential/dp/0307972445/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469574406&sr=8-2&keywords=English+for+Chinese+speakers

In fact, the link i posted is unavailable in the UK and i can't wait 3-4 weeks for delivery, what do you think about this one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Language-Japanese-Essential-Edition/dp/0307478645/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1380635115&sr=8-5&keywords=living+language+japanese

I've seen a frequency dictionary for Czech language. It breaks down the most used words in several categories, including verbs.

>I'm aware the dialects are quite different from each other—should I start by learning MSA and get it as proficient as I can, then try to learn the relevant dialect when I know who I will likely be speaking with? Or should I try to get exposure to different dialects early on? Or even start by learning a specific one? If anyone could point me in the right direction on this I'd be very appreciative!

No point learning MSA if you want a good enough command of Arabic by the time you're ready to do graduate school work AND you know what you want - MSA is a longer-term game and not particularly useful if you have no intention of using it in truly formal contexts (ie. working for the UN, being a news anchor, being a professional newspaper reader). The grammar and vocabulary is considerably more evolved and complex than pretty much any of the dialects, and you'd be wasting your time learning useless things, really.

For work with Middle Eastern refugees, as has been suggested before go for Levantine Arabic. Whoever said the resources were not there is a little lazy in my opinion, because there's actually quite a few, and definitely enough to get you to a decent standard. Just because of the nature of the current conflict, I would actually suggest Syrian Arabic. The country used to host wide numbers of Iraqi refugees that have likely migrated too, and they'll understand this dialect if you cannot be bothered learning Iraqi Arabic.

Syrian Arabic is close enough to Jordanian and Lebanese and Palestinian that you can switch between them quite easily. For Jordanian and Lebanese, it'll often be a case of having different words or slightly different grammar, but they're mutually intelligible for the most part. There's also great resources for the language:

>My favourite textbook was Syrian Colloquial Arabic, which my teacher used when I lived there and had to study the dialect. It's an investment but it's very well-made and relevant. You can also find Colloquial Levantine Arabic, and there's also a grammar book available, and a dictionary and you'll also find vocabulary books such as this one.

For practice, find a meetup group in your city (if you're in a multicultural enough city that is!) and practice on Lang-8 where natives will correct the work you post.