On the Same Page: Voices of Berkeley Welcome Video

Every year the College of Letters & Science at UC Berkeley offers its incoming students something to talk about--with one another and our faculty. This year's theme is the Voices of Berkeley: linguistic diversity. We're inviting our new students to participate in a linguistic experiment, and explore the linguistic diversity of our campus in many ways: one-time discussions with faculty, public events, a one-minute video contest, freshman seminars, and other courses. Details at http://onthesamepage.berkeley.edu.

Oh, should I look at the camera?

Okay.

Ready?

I hope that I can do it.

It's this camera or this camera?

Okay. That is what I thought.

Alright.

Five.

[Speaking in Italian]

[Speaking in Hupa]

[Speaking in Farsi]

[American Sign Language]

Hi, congratulations.

[Speaking in Spanish]

What a great school to be in.

[Speaking in Italian]

[Speaking in Swahili]

Congratulations on coming to

one of the world’s premier universities.

[Speaking in Farsi]

[Speaking in Korean]

There’s just no place like it on earth.

The On the Same Page Program

is a signature event for the

College of Letters and Science

for all of our incoming students,

freshmen and transfers.

The idea is to give this

large group of incoming freshmen

a common academic experience,

something to talk about,

something a bit intellectual.

It’s one of the first occasions,

we hope, among many that

you’ll get to meet senior professors

in your first year at Cal.

This year it’s going to be about language.

We have here at Berkeley,

as you all discover very quickly,

students from more than 100 countries.

What can matter more than language?

So, hi, my name’s Virginia Chung.

And I speak Chipinglish.

And I call that because I speak Chinese,

Japanese and English.

So I call it Chipinglish.

[Speaking in Turkish]

[Speaking in Rumanian]

[Speaking in Spanish]

You realize I’m British, right?

So, I was born in China.

I came to the United States

when I was 17 years old.

My mother came to Cal

in the 1940s.

And her first language was Spanish.

And she came here to be an English major.

My dream job would be

to interpret for the U.N.

I barely spoke any English

when I first came here.

So we’re always re-inventing

ourselves through language.

I’m in the business program.

I just got in.

I was nervous.

I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Don was awed by the hat rack.

Don was awed by the hat rack.

This year the experiment for the

On the Same Page Program is called

Start by Talking Back.

We’ve got these sentences that

will pop up on the screen.

You have a little audio recorder

that pops up in the web browser.

You click on record and say something like

This wheel’s red spokes show why mud is no boon.

This is like the King’s Speech.

We map it in Google Maps.

So that everybody can listen to each other.

You have a dot on the map

that stands for you

and a dot that stands for everybody else

in the incoming class

who’s participated in the program.

And you can listen to each other,

sort of see what you sound like.

You know, we always say Berkeley,

it’s one of the most diverse universities

in the world.

And I ask myself, is it more diverse

than a street corner in San Francisco?

Is it more diverse

than a street corner in Shanghai?

You know, the really great thing

about coming to Berkeley is

you can design an experiment to actually

get an answer to that question.

How diverse is Berkeley?

You won’t know until you come here.

That was, that was hard.

That was hard.

If you check the On the Same Page website

you will see a feast of events,

including faculty panels.

A discussion group led by a faculty member.

A contest.

And a keynote event with Geoff Nunberg.

Well, the event is going to be a

conversation about bilingualism among people

who are artists and scientists

and who work with bilingualism.

It’s an extraordinary topic.

We have a website or you can follow

us on Twitter or on Facebook.

We’re really looking forward to seeing

you here on campus and hearing your voices here.

Now it’s your turn to be the Bear.

Don’t I get to hold the Bear?

Go Bears!

[Speaking in Bengali]

[Speaking in Japanese]

Oski

Go Bears.

[Speaking in Italian]

[Speaking in Mandarin]

Enjoy it while you can

because it goes by really quickly.

That was fun.