Bilingual education teachers need a clear understanding of the nature of language and language variation, and of how language relates to culture in order to be effective. With the needs of these teachers in mind, and drawing from anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics, this chapter clarifies concepts of language and culture that have special relevance for bilingual or multilingual education. It discusses some important attributes of language, namely, the rules of spoken and written language, and the variables of language. The latter include linguistic borrowing and loan words, new usages, pidgins, creoles, and dialects. These and the other two attributes of language, culture and perception, are summed up in a definition of language as a complex, learned, symbolic system of human communication, filtering perception and reflecting the culture of which it is a function. It is primarily spoken, linking sound and meaning by conventional rules. It is also creative, variable and always changing. Implications of these notions for bilingual education are taken up with regard to the planning of bilingual programs, teacher training, determination of goals, and development of resources and methods. Three appendices provide various types of exercises, a list of false Spanish/English cognates and a glossary of multicultural terms. (AMH)