Secret Speak

Do you have a secret language with your best friend that only both of you can understand? Many of us, it seems, can give our friends certain looks and show gestures to suggest what we’re thinking and feeling. These friends are able to pick up and comprehend these gestures and looks. However, do you have a secret dialect that you share with someone else? Me neither. How cool would that be though?



A lot of the time I am asked whether Bri and I have a certain language which we just have with each other. As much as I would like to say yes (I think it’d be pretty cool to talk about the cute guy across the room without anyone else knowing what we’re talking about!), we speak the same language as pretty much everyone in the United States: English. Boring, I know.

I’ve always thought these secret twin languages were really interesting, but I didn’t know anything about these languages and why they exist. How do they develop? Why do they develop? What do the languages really sound like? Is it good or bad for the twins involved? Armed with these questions, I decided to research what secret twin languages really are.

According to HowStuffWorks.com, this language shared between only twins is known by many terms such as twin language, idioglossia, and cryptophasia. Many twins, however, have delayed or poor speech development. This can occur in one twin or both and their speech and interactions between one another are misinterpreted as a secret language. It basically sounds like baby babbling when they speak to one another.

Many researchers believe that this delayed development in speech, and according to this website, is caused by a low birth rate and prematurity. This happens to occur in 60% of twins. Some researchers also believe that this type of development happens because twins spend more one-on-one time with each other, not their parents. This interaction can influence their language development.

So, do secret twin languages not exist? Although most of the time there is language development problems involved, according to the article, there are still twins that make up their own secret languages to communicate. Secret twin speak, although rare, is not a myth. Pretty cool, huh?

References:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/genetic/twin7.htm

http://www.twin-pregnancy-and-beyond.com/images/TwinTalk2.jpg

You Both Can't Be Smart!

Do twins really have the same intelligence? Many people seem to believe that this is not true, that one of us has to be the “dumb” twin.

Although many people hold this misconception, this is not true for Bri and me. It’s actually freakishly weird how similar in intelligence we are. Our similar intelligence caused a lot of problems for us throughout grade school, middle school, and even high school. We were usually in the same classes, but sometimes we just had these classes at different times with the same teacher. We would have similar assignments and many of our papers were similar even if we never even read each other’s before! Because of this, many teachers assumed we were writing papers for each other and cheating, but this wasn’t true at all. I guess we just think a lot alike. It wasn’t our fault that the school scheduled us for the same classes!

It was even worse when they believed we cheated on quizzes and tests…from across the room. How ridiculous is that? One teacher even went as far as putting us in separate rooms to take a test. The results were pretty much identical and we got the same answers wrong. Surprising? I think not. She was pretty blown away but the results though, especially since she thought she could catch us cheating. She just didn’t understand how we could get the same answers right and wrong in different rooms. She even questioned telepathy as our way to communicate throughout tests. She was…different. My mom got calls home about these issues every single year. She had the same question that we had, “How could they cheat from across the room?” And no, it is really not telepathy!

Maybe the teachers should have realized that we study together for tests. If we’re focusing on the same information, we’re more likely to remember the same things. However, during Freshman year of high school, we had one English teacher who was convinced we had to be cheating. She took random points off from papers that she thought were too similar. She even went as far as saying we weren’t allowed to study together! It was a little ridiculous.

I guess some people just don’t understand how we can think so much alike. Anyone who has been in a psych class knows that children who have the exact same genetics and live in the same exact environment develop similarly. Why would intelligence be any different?

Picture from: http://www.treehugger.com/bookworm-photo.jpg

Sinner vs. Saint?

We’ve heard this one a million times. “Since you’re twins, who’s the bad one and who’s the good one?”

To be honest, we’ve never fallen into the good vs. evil stereotype.  I actually think it’s quite silly. Who says that one twin has to be good all the time and the other one has to be bad? That seems a little crazy. I wonder if that is really possible. Can one person really be good all the time? Can they be bad?

When Bri and I are asked this question, we always give each other the same look and say, “Well one of us really isn’t bad.” We’re not lying either. If we ever do anything bad (which really wouldn’t be considered bad by many people’s standards), we both usually do it. I mean my idea of doing something crazy is going out past 10:00 pm when I have class the next day or just missing class during the week. To some people this isn’t a big deal, but Bri and I rarely do this and it is actually very out of character for us.

I’m not saying that we’re both good 100% of the time. Everyone has done something they are not particularly proud of or have just been unnecessarily mean to someone else. The reciprocal is also true. We’re not bad 100% of the time. Like everyone else, we’re not perfect and have personalities that are a mix between the two. Just because Bri and I are twins doesn’t mean that one of us is necessarily nicer than the other.

For instance, there are times when Brianna will drive away in the morning when I’m taking too long to leave for school or I will throw her clothes all over the floor, but there are also times when I’ll help her figure out math problems she doesn’t understand or she’ll proofread my work. We can both be really nice or even mean to each other depending on the day. In a way, we’re both the “good” and “bad” twin.

So, in our case, there is no such thing as the good or bad twin. Depending on the day, we both display characteristics of the evil twin or the good twin (even though it’s usually good). J



image from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyhbdOn333CD1TNnfBPzwlBsJpAW_OZY9VhRGZzYOEUmzLcr3ugWWwAgDbOLCLCg0PXC0xWhgRr3JCCeugmrOoeoMsXLqyQ9d-c3976eHjoY54_8-A7v12UeKWxQlcKzk2PA3yuVQu1Hy9/s320/Good_versus_Evil_by_curua.jpg

Attached at the Hip

Do twins really do everything together? Why yes, we really do. I mean, not everything.  That would be pretty weird. However, at least 99% of the things that I do, Brianna does. If I go out to dinner or to the gym, Brianna comes too.  I mean, we live together, have almost all of the same classes, we go to the same events, we have the same friends, and we’re even in the same sorority. The list goes on and on!

(We were even voted Dynamic Duo in our sorority)

There really never is a time when Brianna and I aren’t together. Every once and a while one of us will go out a date or work on school projects with a group of people, but that’s pretty much it. Tonight, however, was an exception to our typical “attached at the hip” status.

It might seem weird that Bri and I are together almost 24/7, but to us, it feels even stranger when we’re apart.  Tonight, for instance, I had an anatomy test that I had to take which I was not excited about.  Brianna, on the other hand, went to ribboning in for our sorority. She got to get all dressed up to go to a ceremony to welcome all of the new pledges. I got stuck studying all the bones on the body.

This was the first event that Bri went to that I couldn’t. It may not seem like a big deal, but it felt very weird. It’s really an indescribable feeling and I really don’t know how to explain it to anyone else. It’s really not a bad feeling though. I think it’s good to get a sense of independence from each other sometimes, even if it is only for a few hours. I think some people forget that we’re separate people since we spend so much time together doing the same things. We don’t mind being referred to as “the twins,” as most people call us, but it’s nice to know that there are people realize we are not the same. So, it might have been a good step to do different things this evening. Maybe we’ll gain some sense of independence. I mean, we can’t live and do everything together forever!

Seeing Brianna and I separated is really a rare occurrence. So, do twins really do everything together? Besides the slight breaks we have from each other, we truly are “attached at the hip.”