For children in language-minority communities, maintaining their ancestral language preserves ties to their grandparents and keeps open the option of experiences that build ethnic identification and pride, as well as cultural continuity. Parents cannot easily convey to them their values, beliefs, understandings, or wisdom, and about how to cope with their experiences. They cannot teach their children about the meaning of work, or about personal responsibility or what it means to be a moral or ethical person in a world with too many choices and too few guideposts to follow. What is lost are the bits of advice parents should be able to offer children in their everyday interactions with them. Talk is a crucial link between parents and children. It is how parents impart their culture to their children and enable them to become the kind of men and women they want them to be. When parents lose their means for socializing and influencing their children, rifts develop and families lose the intimacy that comes from shared beliefs and understandings.