Open Access

Cléo V. Altenhofen, Jaqueline Frey, Maria Lidiani Käfer, Mário S. Klassmann, Gerson R. Neumann, Karen Pupp Spinassé

• This paper discusses a foundation for writing Hunsrückisch as a German immigrant language in contact with Brazilian Portuguese. This foundation brings together the main conclusions obtained by the Group for the Studies of Hunsrückisch Writing (Grupo de Estudos da Escrita do Hunsrückisch – ESCRITHU). This group was formed at the Language Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul with the goal of proposing not only a system of orthographic norms for a language that exists mostly just in oral forms, but also to encourage research on and linguistic education for speakers of this immigrant language. An already extant literature in Hunsrückisch includes journal and magazine texts such as Sankt Paulusblatt or the Brummbär-Kalendar, published between 1931 and 1935, as well as texts by authors such as Rambo (2002 [1937-1961]), Gross (2001), and Rottmann (1889 [1840]). From these texts various writing formats, guidelines, and goals for an orthographic norm are analyzed, be they for the written expression of the speakers or for useful instruments in the transliteration of ethnotexts within the ALMA-H project (Linguistic- Contactual Atlas of the German Minorities in the La Plata Basin: Hunsrückisch), with which ESCRITHU collaborates.