Although the use of computers t o a s s i s t foreign language acquisition i s not new, only recently have we had access t o inexpensive output devices capable of handling non-Latin character s e t s . Several converging f a c t o r s make the development of hardware and software systems capable of manipulating these character s e t s d e s i r a b l e , but those seeking t o design such systems face some unique problems. These problems stem from c e r t a i n assumptions about the nature o f the character s e t s which need t o be represented by input and output devices, and r e f l e c t the European/North American genesis of e l e c t r o n i c information processing. These assumptions a r e not v a l i d f o r a l l the alphabets which we w i l l soon f i n d it worthwhile f o r our developing technology t o be able t o handle. discusses some of these problems a s they a r i s e i n the implementation of the input/output module of a package t o f a c i l i t a t e the teaching of t h e Hindi language, and presents the authors' approach t o solving them. This paper Background