Most languages of the world have not been the focus of a speech recognition development effort, and the choice of technical approaches best suited to a language can be substantially impacted by the cultural context surrounding it. As the technologist and the teacher of or expert in a non-mainstream language and its culture are typically not the same person, issues that are self-evident to one may come as a surprise to the other. The goal of this paper is to add one plank to the bridge between these two areas of expertise by highlighting some aspects of non-mainstream linguistic contexts that pose challenges to the usual model of speech recognition system development and by suggesting alternative ways to meet these challenges.