You hear talk about twins developing their own language, communicating with each other in a secret code that the rest of us can't break. I was skeptical about twinspeak, until now.
As babies, the girls would often babble at each other with tones and cadences that closely mimicked conversation, as if they were practicing the sounds they heard adults make. I don't believe any actual information was communicated during these sessions -- they just liked the way it sounded.
These days, however, the girls really do seem to have, if not an entire language, a collection of words that are a complete mystery to me. Comboling, poimbing, wending -- the words sound like they're straight out of a Dr. Seuss book, or perhaps as if the girls picked them up from Jabberwocky. (And why do they all sounds like gerunds? What's up with that?)
I most often hear these words when someone is complaining or upset. I think most of Evie and Sophie's twinspeak vocabulary is meant to describe things that annoy them. (Ah, so like their mother.)
An example: A few mornings ago, during breakfast, Evie dripped some syrup on her pajamas and cried out, "Look, Mommy! My shirt! It's very wending and toymbing!"
Before I could formulate a response, Sophie piped up with, "That's not wending. Look at my wending!" while pointing to her own syrup-covered jammies.
As near as I can tell, wending can be defined thusly:
wending \ˈwend-iŋ\ (adj): splattered with syrup; an unpleasant, syrupy state
Evie has an entire lexicon to describe uncomfortable socks. (Much to her dismay and mine, I'm never quite able to figure out exactly what's wrong with the offending socks.) Sophie's invented words generally focus on injustices perpetrated by her sister, and are often sobbed out through tears of sorrow and rage. While the girls don't always use the same words in the same ways, they don't seem to have any trouble understanding each other.
Is this twinspeak? Or just a couple of preschoolers making up words to fill in the gaps in their vocabulary? Whatever it is, it's entertaining and inventive, and I hope to record as much as possible for posterity. I don't think these twinspeak words will last long.
5 comments:
That gerund thing is interesting.
That's what makes the words look like a language, not just toddler babble.
Please keep documenting it. It's all delightful.
How fun this must be! Growing up (albeit it preteens and not preschoolers), my friends and I would make up our own language, but often, by the time we got around to using it, we didn't have a clue what we were talking about because none of us knew what the definitions were.
I'm sure they'll love seeing tapes of their conversations as they get older.
That is so cute. LOVE the gerunds.
My kids used to do this, too! The only word I remember offhand is "Joon-Joon", a noun, which seemed to be some sort of lever. As in "Quick! Hop in the back and pull the joon-joon and morph into an alien! NO NOT THAT JOON-JOON! THE RED JOON-JOON!" There was something else called "welshin(g)" that I never quite understood, but it was similarly used in urgent situations, only it was a verb. Gosh, I miss those little goofballs. They don't use language other than English that I know of, but they still inhabit a world entirely their own... no, seriously. I don't even GET it. I'm pretty sure they are the only ones who ever will get it.
I don't know if it is twinspeak or not. I'm with your mom though, it is all delightful.
I have a friend who is a twin, and she and her sister still speak that way sometimes together. They're 25.
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