As we saw in Chapter 3, a community will often be suspicious of a researcher who does not attempt to learn the language. One must have adequate initial ability in another language known within the community. Part of the preparation for fieldwork is reading all available materials on the target group, as well as the area and other nearby groups, and whatever has been done on the group’s own language. Fieldwork will be much more effective if the language is learned fairly well during the process; this is not a short-term task. Unfortunately, most scholarly linguistic materials are not designed for learning conversational skills; but there may be materials aimed at tourists or incoming local government workers; see, for example, Bradley et al. (1991, first, second and third editions) for a brief introduction to five minority languages of mainland South East Asia and southern China.