This paper examines the question of language loyalty in the United States and explores the implications that the institutional teaching of modern languages may have for ethnic language maintenance. The education of United States ethnics has always resulted in the loss of the ethnic tongue as a resource. However, although negative attitudes toward ethnicity, on the part of both ethnics themselves and non-ethnics, have been diminishing, ethnic cultural recovery does not automatically imply mother tongue recovery. In the past foreign language departments have treated U.S. ethnic tongues only as foreign (or second) languages. They are prepared to attend to the needs of those ethnics who are English-speaking monolinguals and who want to acquire as a second language the tongue of their cultural group but not to the needs of ethnics who are either monolingual in the ethnic tongue or bilingual in any degree. If the U.S. were to adopt a language planning policy that had as its specific goal the maintenance and development of ethnic tongues, it could not turn for expertise to the modern language field. The methodology for teaching ethnic language arts is still in its infancy and there is no general movement on the part of conventional language departments to aid in its development. However, if some significant attitudinal and methodological changes were made, no place would be more adequate than a language department to train teachers in the language and culture of a group or to turn students into educated users of their own native language. (Author/CFM)