Try doesn't dick around with you. Same thing.

Modern Tibetan
"Manual of Standard Tibetan" by Tournadre and Dorje is solid. It's what we used in my first-year Tibetan course and the standard, I believe, for learners of Modern Tibetan. Lots of good grammar description, including appendices on differences between registers of Tibetan and dialects of Tibetan. Its descriptions of grammar in the lessons themselves are less linguisticky than the ones in the appendix but they are all usable, though watch out for its non-standard transcription scheme.


Basque
Standard Basque: A Progressive Grammar by de Rijk is a wonderful thing: it's a reference grammar, with example sentences and vocabulary. It presents the easier grammatical structures (rules of the definite and indefinite articles and what not) first, and then moves later onto the more challenging Basque verbs, with meaty grammatical descriptions for everything.


That's all I've got for now - I'll probably think of some later.

quoting Nessari:

Try doesn't dick around with you. Same thing.

That doesn't help. What exactly does dicking around entail, with regard to a language textbook?

…ok, try they don't fuck around with you. That has to be clear.

Maybe I'm not being clear enough. I want examples of what a linguistics textbook looks like when it's dicking around with you.

Ok, that makes more sense. Having never read an intro linguistics book, I can't help with that I'm sorry to say.

Those aren't linguistics textbooks.

Point. Matrix, have you never read a shitty Teach Yourself LANGUAGE book?

Hello: Marhaban.
Let's look at it in a dialogue.
Ali: Marhaban, Amir.
Amir: Marhaban, Ali.
In Arabic, to say "hello", you say "marhaban". To make this more clear, let's take a look at some more examples:
Fatimah: Marhaban, Amir, Marhaban Ali.
Ali: Marhaban, Fatimah.
Amir: Marhaban, Fatimah. Kaifa haluki?
"Kaifa haluki?" means "How are you", but don't worry about that quite yet. For now, focus on "marhaban".

Asked a linguist friend of mine what textbooks he'd recommend, and he gives the following:

quoting my friend:

College Yiddish is a classic, but I'm also a big fan of Sheva Zucker's two-part Yiddish textbooks.
DeRijk, if that counts as a textbook, and Alan R. King's Elementary Basque or whatever it's called.

Genki is a beloved Japanese textbook for a reason, though I haven't used it much. I'm also a big fan of Learn Japanese the Manga Way, which is better as a reference text but is still really good either way.

quoting Nessari:

Point. Matrix, have you never read a shitty Teach Yourself LANGUAGE book?

Correct.

Colloquial Syrian Arabic, Mary-Jane Liddicoat - goes slowly for the first half, then very fast for the second half and you get the impression there should've been more chapters. Also bizarrely uses some very, very colloquial Damascene lexemes, some of which are markedly 'folksy' even within Damascus and some of which might not be understood even by other Syrians. On the other hand, gives a comprehensive view of basic morphology and morphophonology and a very good base of useful vocabulary and miscellaneous expressions and constructions and leaves you able to have a wide range of transactional conversations (but unlike other textbooks is not restricted to transactional conversation and gives you the tools to build a more general fluency). All in all, the best Levantine Arabic textbook and don't dick you around.

Comprehensive Study of Modern Egyptian Arabic, Ernest T Abdel Massih - Jesus Christ if these books existed for every language nobody would ever be dicked around ever. Consists of a number of different textbooks, beginning with an Introduction to Egyptian Arabic and including an alphabetical reference grammar (?), themed vocabulary lists, texts in colloquial Arabic (plays and so on) and several other resources. Even taken on its own, An Introduction is incredible comprehensive for what it is and very well suited to those of a linguistic bent who are familiar with some of the more basic jargon and want an approach which doesn't simplify or patronise like most language textbooks. Available online, although I don't know if the audio can be found. All in all, don't dick you around.

quoting Matrix:

quoting Nessari:

Point. Matrix, have you never read a shitty Teach Yourself LANGUAGE book?

Correct.

So you're saying you've never read a shitty language-teaching book? Seriously? I find that very hard to believe.

The only language textbooks I've read were for French and Japanese, and all within the context of school. Furthermore, I barely remember any of them, let alone what they were called. I remember in my Japanese classes, the main textbooks we used were, I think, Australian. I think we also might have had a Genki book in one of them that we never used.

I was in Portland this weekend and I found Thackston for thirty bucks! Go me!

quoting Nessari:

quoting Matrix:

quoting Nessari:

Point. Matrix, have you never read a shitty Teach Yourself LANGUAGE book?

Correct.

So you're saying you've never read a shitty language-teaching book? Seriously? I find that very hard to believe.

To be fair, we know that most language-teaching books are shitty, and if you've never read a good one you may just be consigned to believe that that's just the way language-teaching books are.

Yeah, the first decent language textbook I ever looked at was Wheelock's. Unfortunately, the demands of textbook publishers are such that Wheelock's gets filled with more and more superfluous nonsense with every passing edition, but it's second to none if you know what to ignore. Now, what I wouldn't give to have Wheelock's Sanskrit...

(Maybe I'll write one someday...)

Could we maybe turn this into a proper featured article, one that has several approved editors?

Latin for Americans > Wheelock's imo

Sengoídelc: Old Irish for Beginners by David Stifter

It's difficult. You get some good background, and a great amount of Old Irish example sentences, a lot from real sources, but it piles on the information quickly and the transcription for phonetic stuff is difficult to read (using non-standard Greek letters to represent phonemes, instead of IPA symbols). There's a lot of reconstruction examples of Proto-Celtic through to Old Irish, which is nice, but maybe unnecessary for true beginners.

I'm sure if you have the patience to get through the density of the first few chapters, it'll be a great resource, but otherwise, it's an awkward read. (and it's about as massive as Wheelock's Latin).

This textbook does dick you around.