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.
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.