Anyone passionate, especially underclassmen, about learning new cultures should join the German Club, according to junior Nathaniel Allen, who attended the club meeting in Room 2720 on Sept. 21. About 30 students attended.
“We’re really trying to get more underclassmen right now to increase membership and get more people learning about German culture and everything German for everybody,” Allen said.“[We] welcome anyone who’s interested.”
First-time attendee and junior Joshua Block agreed that students don’t necessarily have to have a German ancestry to join the club.
“[It was] the most accessible club I’ve ever been to,” Block said.
Junior Andrei Perepelitsa, who wants to preserve German in America, discussed at the meeting that in 1917, German was the second most commonly spoken language in America.
Today, it is the 13th and dropping rapidly.
Perepelitsa especially wants to preserve Texasdeutsch, the unique German-English hybrid that developed in the Hill Country, but is now facing extinction.
“It’s a shame that fewer and fewer people are speaking German in Texas,” Perepelitsa said. “German settlement was a big part of this state’s history and it should be remembered. Perhaps [it’s] inevitable that today’s more unified ‘American’ identity pushes out small dialects such as Texas German,” Perepelitsa said. “Everything is slowly absorbed into one culture.”
During the meeting, vice president and senior Kihea Adams-Wilson said that Texasdeutsch is dying out rapidly, with UT Austin linguists estimating it will die out completely by 2035. In a state where 2.5 million residents claim German descent, only around 5,000 of them, mostly the elderly, speak Texasdeutsch.
To teach new members about Texasdeutsch, German Club members ended the meeting with a fast-paced, trivia Blooket and member Justin Lee, senior, won the game.
“The Battle Royale was cool,” Lee said. “It was interesting to learn about Texasdeutsch [and do] a competitive activity related to it.”
For more information about the German Club, join its Remind @german2324 and follow its Instagram @bellaire.german.club.
