The paper considers the linguistic guidelines of the young people of the Republic of Buryatia in respect of both the state languages (Buryat and Russian) and foreign ones. Special attention is paid to the changes taking place in the education system of the republic. Statistical data are cited on the changes in the time allotted for teaching the Buryat language as well as foreign languages at the schools of Buryatia. One of the tasks of the research undertaken by the paper authors was to identify the language preferences of the modern youth by means of polling pupils and students as well as parents and teachers. The authors argue that language preferences and prevalence of one or another language in education depend on the geographical position of the regionas well as on pragmatic (dividends from language knowledge) and non-pragmatic (ethnoidentification and esthetics) motives.