(Part 2) Best 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 got so much fun stuff from /u/PandaProphetess! I got some lovely green yarn & needles to match, this book on canning and this book on writing. Neither of which I own already, yay!

Also since I mentioned that tarot cards were my secret love I got a new [deck] (https://www.amazon.com/Ostara-Tarot-Morgan-Applejohn/dp/0764352822/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525531995&sr=8-1&keywords=ostara+tarot) and it's AMAZING.

I haven't had the best of luck with reddit secret exchanges in the past, but I'm definitely super happy with my gifts. Thanks, /u/Panda Prophetess!

Can you get a rush order on this to give to her? https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553052233/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_qtZ8AbJ8D3MTF

"Oh MIL, DH was mentioning you were having a hard time choosing gifts lately so I thought this might help"

MIL: Oh I'd rather have your list.

OP: My list? ... Oh... The list of what I got from everyone at my wedding? (With a quizzical raised brow and side eye) I threw that out long ago. I used it for sending thank you cards and that's it. You could always call or message people to ask them what they'd given us.

Act completely oblivious as to why she'd need your list so your responses don't feed her entitlement. Have absolutely zero clue why she'd need your weeding list. That way she'd be forced to explain how brash she's being in wanting to match gifts tit for tat and if she's bold enough to do so, again push the book on her because it will solve all her problems. Hopefully she's not rude enough to elaborate and she'll just cbf and shut up about it.

No mate, both your girlfriend and her friend are absolutely wrong on this. It's the bride's fault that she did not specify 'plus guest' in her invitations. It would also have been rude for your girlfriend to ask if you were invited. If the missus gives you any more grief just buy her a copy of Debrett's and place a bookmark on the relevant page. They're quite clear on this.


>EXTRA WEDDING GUESTS

>If the invitation has arrived and it does not specify 'and guest', it is the height of rudeness to ask to bring one or assume that a partner is invited.
Source

No hay un culture smart! de Brasil? El de Chile lo encontré bueno (es una serie de guias sobre la cultura de cada país para turistas y emigrantes).

https://www.amazon.com/Brazil-Culture-Smart-Essential-Customs/dp/1857336895

I'm sure that plenty of people will disagree with me, but I REALLY don't like textbooks for self-study. It's always seemed to me that the authors of textbooks half-ass explaining things since they assume you'll have a teacher who can explain it to you. (Also they tend to be really expensive!)

For getting your feet underneath you, I honestly love phrasebooks (Rick Steves; Lonely Planet) and picture dictionaries.

At the start, I used (still use!) the "Practice Makes Perfect" series. They're not expensive at all, though they might as well be printed on newspaper - these are NOT long term reference works... there are a ton of these in the series that I haven't listed below, but these are good:

• Practice Makes Perfect Basic Italian
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Vocabulary
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Pronouns And Prepositions
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Sentence Builder
  
• Practice Makes Perfect Italian Conversation
  
  These are more expensive but absolutely worth the price:
  
  
• Modern Italian Grammar: A Practical Guide (and the corresponding workbook maybe)
  
• Soluzioni: A Practical Grammar of Contemporary Italian
  
• A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian
  
• Using Italian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage
  
• Using Italian Vocabulary
  
• Using Italian Synonyms
  
  Edit: Forgot this one but it's worthwhile also - Italian Fluency: Twin-Words and Essential Vocabulary.
  
  Avoid at all costs ... "Italian for Dummies"; "501 Italian Verbs" :)

Two things: For history and high culture, you want "Natasha's Dance" http://www.amazon.com/Natashas-Dance-Cultural-History-Russia/dp/0312421958/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420918749&sr=1-1&keywords=Natasha%27s+dance


For a detailed look at basically every aspect of Russian everyday life and worldview (everything from historic army uniforms to the culture of medicine to folk tales and superstitions), "The Russian's World" is where it's at. http://www.amazon.com/The-Russians-World-Language-Edition/dp/0893573809 The 2nd or 3rd edition will be much cheaper, but the information I got from my older edition (published 2000) about basic daily life was pretty outdated when I was in Russia (2012).

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

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.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Etiquette-Book-Complete-Manners/dp/1402776020

Hey there - fellow March 2020 CYD invitee here!

My Armenian friend highly recommended this particular Eastern Armenian phrasebook. I purchased it last week:

https://www.amazon.com/Armenian-English-English-Eastern-Armenian-Dictionary-Phrasebook/dp/078181006X

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 :)

Sounds like quite a challenge. I don't have much advice or experience in multi-lingual environments (maybe /u/Rocknocker will chime in) but here are some resources my google-fu recovered:

• Geotechnical Engineering Handbook Could be helpful to establish common practices and terms by sharing or loaning out.
  
• Illustrated Dictionary of Geology with English-Arabic Glossary
  
• Elsevier's Oil and Gas Field Dictionary This is kinda expensive but covers 6 languages including English, Italian and Arabic.
  
• English to Turkish Civil Engineering Dictionary
  
• Arabic Dictionary of Civil Engineering: English- Arabic, Arabic-English
  
• Italian to English Environmental Engineering Dictionary There is also Farsi and Arabic versions of this book
  
• Kurdish Dictionary and Phrasebook
  
  I also found a pdf download of an Arabic Dictionary of Scientific and Engineering Terms(Al-Muntaqa) but I didn't download it and have no idea of the quality.

Brazil - Culture Smart!: the essential guide to customs & culture

You should look up a cool little phrasebook called "Making out in Korean"

It's an introduction-level book, but it has a lot of the terms you seem to be looking for, from first meeting, setting up a date, "your place or mine"-ing and then bedroom talk from "oh yeah that's good" to "no, don't put anything in there."

Amazon Link for Making Out in Korean

Amazon Link for More Making Out in Korean

Coffee Break French https://open.spotify.com/show/6YqgG1UezfW9khCvLh8rvw (audio course, things like shopping, ordering food, etc)

Clozemaster https://www.clozemaster.com (mass vocab)

A grammar workbook like French Conversation https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Conversation-Premium/dp/1260010686 I loved their Italian equivalent

I mean, the alphabet gets a little confusing at the beginning because you're not used to seeing dots everywhere so everything looks kind of the same at the beginning, but I don't think it's any easier or harder than the kanas, really!

If you want to get to a level where you can converse with refugees, go with Levantine Arabic, not MSA. Most people will understand MSA if they've been schooled, but they can't always reply back in it, and you don't want to be in a situation where you can't understand them if they reply in dialectal Arabic.

At the moment the crisis mostly affects the Levant, and especially Syria (obviously), and there's good resources for that dialect. 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. From Syrian, you'll get Lebanese Arabic very easily (it's like American VS British English), Jordanian and Palestinian (a little less easily). Iraqi is a different one altogether, but would be worth considering if you want to get involved in helping refugees.

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

thats basically marriage Really? That long?
all i really have is books on my wishlist

this book is 11 not really 10 but i will put it here just incase i win

To be fair, 1997 (when i was born) is still the 90's, I don't think its the year that matters when dealing with the fact that earlier 90's kids stick together as much as it is my generation (1996-1999) is full of little egotistical pricks, so we are alot less groupy, i have a better time hanging out with my older brother's friends than I do my peers... I hate being associated with people like 12 year olds who call strangers fags and cock suckers over call of duty and only listen to rap and sell drugs and have sex in 7th grade so their friends think their cool. And I'm 'automatically' obsessed with trends like "YOLO", Beats by Dre, SWAAGG, self-pics (mirror pictures, for facebook), sexting, and all the other bullshit that makes adults cringe at the mention of my generation. It saddens me that I was born in the same generation of the likes of people like Rebecca Black, and not, say, anyone with some FUCKING TALENT, I have to deal with bullshit like being assumed to like Twilight and Teen Wolf and The Hunger Games, when I would much rather read Fahrenheit 451, The Lord of The Rings, or [Choosing Civility] (http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-Civility-Twenty-five-Considerate-Conduct/dp/1452635110) (Non-fiction by P.M. Forni, if you haven't read it, I really suggest giving it a look.) So I think the "90's kids have a good reason for being the way they are, and I wish every day I was one of them.

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TL;DR: 90's Kids have good reason to brag about how great they are, and my generation kinda sucks.