Abstract
In this opening article an introduction is presented on the use and acquisition of vernacular literacy in nonmainstream communities. It is assumed that in multilingual societies literacy inside and outside the mainstream may serve complementary sets offunctions and that literacy skills in various languages can be regardedas relevant human resources. Furthermore, it is shown that the written tradition of the ethnic languages and the sociolinguistic background of the ethnic groups are important predictors of communication in vernacular literacy, and that bilingual literacy instruction is important to help children acquiring two written codes. However, it is also maintained that the language (education) policies of regional and national authorities to a large extent determine whether or not communities will be in the Position to become literate in the native language. The article ends up with a short introduction to the contributions in the present volume.
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