Jay is a sophomore Linguistics and German major at UT Austin. As an Austin native, their German instruction began in high school where they participated in the Austin-Koblenz Sister Cities exchange program, after which they began seriously pursuing their study of the language. With a strong interest in semantics and syntax (notably word order), they joined the Texas German Dialect Project team to further their understanding of language variation between dialects and to help preserve a culture. Outside of their studies, Jay enjoys camping, hiking, gardening with native Texan plants, fishing, and cooking.