lol SweetPoison, don't be too impressed. I can buy and sell and navigate a taxi very easily in Arabic (the last two years I lived in Alexandria, Egypt), but I really can't carry on a detailed conversation. And now that I live in Korea, I have at least begun to learn enough Korean to travel on the metro and navigate a taxi. I found the pronunciations in Korean to be very hard for my mouth to form. I have no problem with pronunciation in Arabic... that came easy to me.
I'm convinced that if I memorize about 100 words in a language, I can generally get around in that language. Basic words and phrases like - left, right, straight, stop, yes, no, please, excuse me, where is the toilet, nice to meet you, hello, goodbye - can really make it easier to communicate. The main phrase I use in Russian is - ya ochoose gvatit pow russke - which means, "I am learning to speak Russian." Native speakers are then more likely to be forgiving when I butcher their grammar and mispronounce words.
Spaciba.