“Learn all you can…. Get to know their families, clans and tribes, friends and enemies, wells, hills and roads. Do all this by listening and by indirect inquiry. … Get to speak their dialect … not yours. Until you can understand their allusions, avoid getting deep into conversation or you will drop bricks.” ~ T. E. Lawrence, from The Arab Bulletin, 20 August 1917
(Reproduced at The World War I Document Archive.)