Cryptophasia: The Secret Language Of Twins
It is very tender to listen to babies when they speak their language, something that hardly anyone understands. In the case of the twins it is doubly thrilling; in fact they seem to understand each other. According to the studies, the twin brothers actually understand each other and have a secret language called cryptophasia.
More than forty years ago, scholars were challenged to interpret the case of the twins Grace and Virginia Kennedy. These American sisters grew up with their grandmother, who was German. The little girls, at the age of 6, could not speak English. On the other hand, they spoke an incomprehensible language among themselves.
According to the observations made by family members and specialists, it was a fairly complex language. At that time the news caused a sensation: the twins had invented a secret language. Experts were fascinated by this discovery.
Cryptophasia is the name that was given to this language and it was studied like any other unknown language or culture. Linguists began to identify the grammatical and syntactic rules developed by this very small community. Later other discoveries were made in this regard; let’s see how the story continues.
Discovery of cryptophasia
Scholars have continued to make progress in studying the language of girls. They found that they had never been stimulated by their parents. They did not live in contact with society and also emotionally they were very isolated. As a newborn, by mistake, they were diagnosed with a mental disability and this meant that they did not receive any stimulation.
Their parents did not send them to school and they rarely left the house. Grace and Virginia spent most of their time with their grandmother, who barely spoke to them and when she did she used her language: German. When linguists approached the girls, a normal IQ was finally diagnosed.
As a result of the isolation in which they lived, the girls were forced to communicate with each other. They were kept out of the outside world, never having the company of children or adults. The only contact with the English language had occurred when they were in the mother’s womb.
Under the circumstances, the linguists concluded that their language was not really their own. These were constructions based on words in English. Then, the girls randomly joined words of the mother tongue in order to communicate with each other. They were sentences and words with bad pronunciation, lacking in syntax and grammar, hence the evident lack of coherence that was attributed to them.
Later, the girls were taught the English language: they began to speak as best they could, but never attained normal fluency. However, they helped to understand that cryptophasia can evolve between twins because their level of development is similar.
Apparently, all children do this linguistic construction. Newborns use poorly pronounced words, lack syntax and grammar. But they cannot progress in this language of their own because they are alone.
The language of babies
Each newborn is capable of developing his or her own language. It is a set of expressions that only he understands. Instead, in the case of twins this language can evolve as they understand each other very well. They are at the same level of development and there is a higher communication between them that comes directly from the mother’s womb.
Twins talk to each other through cryptophasia as long as it is sustainable. Somehow we have witnessed how babies seem to speak. However, this type of communication does not continue because it is faced with a social impediment, in fact no one understands them. As a result, cryptophasic twins end up leaving this language around the age of three, because it is not very practical.
The time the twins spend together allows them to create their own code. Despite this, it is known that any child, young or adult can create secret language systems. Through this language they can exclude others and keep everything strictly personal. In the case of the Kennedy twins, the evolution that their language has had has been greater due to the social isolation in which they lived. They had no pressure to stop communicating in this way.
Cryptophasia is present in at least half of the twin population, including non-identical ones. Most of the cases identified in the studies turn out to be a combination of poorly pronounced words of the native language.
Each child develops cryptophasia before acquiring the current language, but mistakes are fortified between twins. Fortunately for your children, these constructions do not prevent the development of the mother tongue.
