Second-language and native-language methodologies are equally inappropriate as a foundation for the language training of cultural minorities. Second-language methodologies are based on the assumption that the language is to be acquired in school, as either a subject or a school activity. The relationship between teaching and learning is taken for granted, as is the existence of levels of competence acquired in school and related to age-grade learning progression from year to year. Language minorities of the same age-grade level enter school with extra-scholastically acquired competence in the second language that ranges individually from incipient to native-like. However, few can be classed in the same age-grade level as unilinguals for whom the language is native, since entire areas of their conceptual universe may exist only in their other language. Yet their combined language repertoire may be sufficient in their bicultural environment. The function of the school may be to enrich each of these repertoires, making the bilinguals biliterate while teaching them to keep their two or more languages separate. (An English abstract accompanies this paper.) (Author/MSE)