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This paper aims to contribute to the rich discussion that has been developed in this journal throughout previous editions. Many authors have already written here about their considerations and praxis regarding bilingualism, bilingual contexts and bilingual education from different perspectives. Thus, this paper also brings to discussion aspects of the education in bilingual settings in Brazil, where people speak Portuguese and a variety of German basis called Hunsrückisch as their mother tongue. Moreover, this paper aims to be an account of results from different researches, which deal with the advantages of speaking dialect to learn standard German and the prejudices, learners coming from minority languages confront.
One of the most striking moments in the life of Brazilian children speaking a minority language happens when they go to elementary school. There, the attitude towards the family language is completely indifferent, if not openly hostile, since the school sees its duty limited to alphabetising the child in the official language, which is Portuguese. This article reflects on practical strategies for teaching school children speaking immigrant languages, focussing on the different meaning of alphabetisation in minority language contexts and on the advantages of early bilingualism, ascertained by research in cognitive science (cf. Bialystok 2005). Immigrant contexts of this nature are being studied in the linguistic atlas project ALMA-H (Atlas Linguístico-Contatual das Minorias Alemãs na Bacia do Prata - Hunsrückisch). Based on data from this project and considering the Brazilian educational context the article proposes strategies that could help to improve the alphabetisation process of those groups by reconciling the dissociation that separates school contexts from family contexts in areas of collective bilingualism in Brazil.