German became restricted to formal contexts such as church, whereas all daily interactions happened either in dialect or in Portuguese, from which the required words for innovations were also taken. Speakers of Hunsrik are typically bilingual with Portuguese, but are not necessarily familiar with Standard German. The elementary school of Santa Maria do Herval, a municipality in Rio Grande do Sul with a population of roughly 6,000, teaches Hunsrik and uses a new orthography for this which is closer to Portuguese than to Standard German conventions, this follows a research by SIL International and led by professor Ursula Wiesemann to standardize the language according to its actual use in the local communities and social networks. This method is also used for teaching on other local municipalities with native Hunsrik speakers. A concurrent standardization approach led by the professor Cléo Altenhofen criticizes this detachment, demanding a closer orthographic tie between Hunsrik and Standard German, and arguing that the efforts should try to revert the Portuguese influence over the language by keeping a very conservative orthography, in a way that it would be only a variation of the original Hunsrückisch dialect. In July 2018, the mayor of Blumenau, Mario Hildebrandt, signed Decree no. 11,850/2018, which created the Bilingual Erich Klabunde Municipal School, offering teaching in Portuguese and German. Co-official status Santa Catarina Antônio Carlos Ipumirim Treze Tílias Rio Grande do Sul Santa Maria do Herval Barão East Pomeranian East Pomeranian, a dialect of Low German, is spoken in many places in southeastern and southern Brazil: Projeto de Educação Escolar Pomerana, founded 2004 by teachers and five municipalities in Espírito Santo (Santa Maria de Jetibá, Laranja da Terra, Vila Pavão, Domingos Martins, Pancas). Education in (Brazilian?) East Pomeranian. Spoken in Rondônia since 1970. In Santa Leopoldina, first European settlement in Espírito Santo, the descendants of immigrants from Switzerland and Luxembourg now speak East Pomeranian. Santa Maria de Jetibá (previously part of Santa Leopoldina) is Brazil's center of Pommeranian culture with 90% (ethnic?) Pommeranians. Co-official status Espírito Santo Afonso Cláudio (in the district of Mata Fria) Domingos Martins Itarana Laranja da Terra Pancas Santa Maria de Jetibá Vila Pavão Santa Catarina Pomerode Rio Grande do Sul Canguçu Rondônia Espigão d'Oeste Minas Gerais Itueta (only in the district of Vila Nietzel) Other German dialects in Brazil Plautdietsch, spoken by Mennonites from the former Soviet Union (since the 1930s). Tyrol Austro-Bavarian dialect and Vorarlberg Alemannic in