I think my children (oldest singleton included) must be pretty right brained… Language was always the first to come- They could speak in sentences before they were two.. (but didn’t do to good with puzzles and stuff) We did notice how they did help each other along with language. They would practice theier new words with each other and practice responding.. etc..
My twin boys share a secret language since they were 2 yrs old. They are now 3 1/2 and they still talk thier secret language to each other. They will talk normally to adults but sometimes they will talk their special language to other children, which these children look at my twins kind of funny. Idon’t know if they will ever outgrown this.
My twin girls had their own language, and the 3rd (Irish triplet) born 15 months after learned it too; the twins didn’t bother learning our speech until the youngest did it on her own. It became a problem in school, they didn’t know how to communicate to others what had or was happening (and less astute teachers believed the 3 year olds stories-resulting in CPS issues-don’t get me started). The school suggested speech therapy which has helped. They have repeated kindergarten this year, we want them to have a good foundation. I’ve tried to explain it to the school that in addition to learning the languages of numbers and letters, the twins had to learn English too. It was a tough year for them. So now, we have 3 girls, all in kindergarten (everyone has a different teacher). The twins continue speech therapy, one struggles with proper pronoun usages, but we’re getting there. While the twin talk is cute and unique, there are issues to overcome later when school comes into the picture.
I have twin boy and girl. Yes, they share a language.They have a laughing problem.When the 2 of them starts laughing they won’t stop.Noone can make them stop.The funny part is that noone knows what they are laughing about.So it makes everyone else laugh.
I have identical twin boys, now 7. When they were infants they communicated with what we referred to as “twin speak”.I guess you could describe it as a grunting noise, but it was the “ping” and “pong” type respose that caught our attention. They were definitely communicating on some level. It seemed to comfort them to know that the other was close by.
The film ‘Nell’ is about the survivor of a pair of twins who kept their twin talk into adulthood, mixed with Biblical archaisms and the mother’s aphasic speech.
Also look up June and Jennifer Gibbons, and “Poto and Cabengo” (Grace and Virginia Kennedy).
Comment by Jay Young — November 14, 2007 @ 4:43 pm
my twins don’t really talk to eachother in this language but one of them in particular has his own words for things even though he is quite capable and understands language, however, recently I’ve noticed that the other one is using Ashie’s language for things even though Ozzie is quite capable of saying words and phrases also. And we have started to use Ashie’s language aswell. These are his words for things.
Doombah = Daddy
Wah Wah = Mummy
Owah = shoes/slippers/socks
Oddot (silent ‘t’) = Ozzie (real name Ocean) his twin
Mm Mm = Birdy (real name Phoenix) his 3 year old brother
Mat man = Kal his 19year old brother
whoo whoo = train
He used to have a name for dog but he doesn’t use that any more.
I have twin boys who are 6yrs old and they still speak in twin. We have tried very hard to help them and so as the school they are in but i think they dont even relise they are doing it. They started to talk fine at around 18mth and then started to talk in this way we didn,t get. They have got much better over the last 12mths but i wonder if they will ever talk properly. My problem is how hard it is to get any help for it. From the age of 2 i got told they would grow out of it. At the age of 3 and a half they have started having speech therepy but they only get 45mins once a week for 10 sessions and the sessions can be 10 over 16wks. I think this is awful. After 10 sessions they go back on a waiting list for 5mth. I have tried everything to get more help for the boys i even went to the papers but that didnt really help it just make them look like freaks. All i get is its just their speech. Kids with this problem need so much more help than they get and it leaves me wondering how old they have to get before they will get any real help.
I have 15 month old twin boys. They speak to eachother more then they speak to us, they seem to know what eachother is thinking before an action is made. When I ask one a question he tends to look at the other for advice or approval, then he will respond with a babble of some sort. I believe that they have been able to communicate with one another since before they were born.
My youngest set of twins DID have their own talk. They are 15 and still say thing that no one understands but themselves. I don’t think it’s a myth. I think most scientist or other “we know what we’re talking about” people just don’t want to believe it.
My 4 yr old boys do not share a twin language, they share twin vocabs. Like, ‘a-cheh’ is thank you and ‘boom boom’ refers to a bike. No amount of family intervention can correct this. ‘Acheh’ and ‘boom boom’ is now part of our family vocab. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Yes, twins do have there own language, I have 2 1/2yrs olds girls and at night before they go to bed they have conversations with each other… they can understand it, but we can’t!
Yes, I have 4 year old twins, and and I thought at one time they had a developmental problem, until a doctor told me about twin talk, they communicate to each other in their own languange and sometimes if they want to tell me a secret it would be in twin talk, as if I understand what they are talking about.They did not develop “real words” until they were about 21/2. They still have some communication issues but they are now bi-lingual.
I have twin grandaughters, and yes, they have a language all their own. They are almost 3.5 years old now. It’s the funniest thing to listen to because they talk really fast when they do it as though it’s a real language. I suppose for them it is.
I have an identical twin sister. And all my life my parents told us that when we were babies we had our own language that we would speak to eachother. This only happened when no one was around. When we would be left in our cribs opposite sides of the room, my parents would come to wake us up from our sleep and find us standing up, looking at eachother and talking very fast. And they said we almost seemed angry sometimes. And when my parents would come in we would stop instantly. I love this story. Because now at 21 years old, we still communicate differently. And i dont have to explain most things because she finishes my sentence or my thoughts. We trip out about it all the time.
I have an identical twin we are now 22 and our parents said we had a very specific way of commuicating with one another and still do…they had us in speech therpy and seperate classes at school until junior high.. But still till this day i think its just the bond one has with ones twin that outsiders dont understand there for try to put an explanation on it when really all that is needed to know is a twin is a twin you spend nine months in the same women your bound to have an amazing closeness to one another. Like the girl above me said my sister and i have a way of knowin what the other feels and sometimes thinks it trips us out to we go to seperate collages in different states now but we still have an unbreakable bond..
My twin and I are 25 and our speech with each other seems to get more and more shortened and replaced with sounds or facial expressions. We can be across a room full of people and have a whole conversation just with facial expressions and no ones the wiser. I dont even call her by her real name, twice this week talking to my mom and my brother i mentioned her nickname and they both said who????? I’ve been calling her that for years!
I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, being able to have someone go through a lot fo the same experiences and understand you on such a deep level is amazing.
i think that twins do have a secret language. im a twin and also have twins of my own. they definately communicate with each other. i believe firmly that one undersyands the other. my twin sister and i can also carry a conversation strictly through facial expressions.
Comment by jocelyn jones — February 23, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
me and my sister are twins and we used to have a language we would say random made up words and we could completely understand, we would also draw random pics of lines and we thought they were wonderful and sometimes breakout laughing in histericts.
sometimes we have the same dreams too
I have identical twin boys who are nearly 3 and they do have there own language they can get the sounds of real words out to adults but i have to get them to say it a few times before i know what they are saying but they just talk to each other in thier own way and their older brother can understand them so i know what they want but i dont know whether or not to seek help from a speech therapist or wait for them to learn naturally has anyone else found this problem with theier twins?
Comment by Lauren Roberts — March 13, 2009 @ 4:36 am
My identical twin brother and I had a language of our own. We didn’t play well with other kids (I liked hitting people and he was very shy), but we always played together perfectly, so when our parents brought us places to play with other kids, like a playground or something, we would just sit somewhere off by ourselves and talk to each other. We both did some speech therapy when we got to school age, but continued using our “language” and weren’t made fun of because we were homeschooled by our mum. Now we’re sixteen, we still use the language at home (and out in public too! we aren’t embarassed by it). We’ve gotten better at making friends, but we never do things seperately (i.e. I have a sleepover at a girlfriend’s house while my brother does something with his guy friends), because both of us get panic attacks when away from each other. We have a really strong bond, sometimes almost too strong, but we both love it. The people we hang out with call us the “Creepy Twins” as a joke. We don’t really mind, the only opinion that really matters to either of us is each other’s.
~ Bella
I am a triplet and my sister, brother, and I, when we were around 2 or 3, would sit in a circle and talk in this weird language. One day my mom decided to try and talk with us, and we all just started staring then laughed at her. I am now 14 and I just thought is was pretty cool how we had our own language. *peace*
I have twin 2 year old girls who without a doubt have their own way of communicating with each other. Both have suffered hearing loss to different degrees. They both have been taught sign language as well as verbal language. I have watched them talk to each other while playing ask for things. They will use the correct sign with me but when they are talking to each other, it is a different sign. Even the words they speak are different between adults and themselves. It is amazing to see. The younger of my twins has seizures and the older twin always can tell when it is coming on. She comes and gets me or will sound the alarm. I firmly believe they do have ways to talk to each other. And they do NOT like to be apart.
i have twin girls that are 4yrs old and reguardless of what “professionals” may say about twin talk being a myth unless they have twins in a day in day out situation what do they really know!! my girls talk 2 each other in twin talk which is lovely 2 watch,they understand each other perfectly while other’s can’t. my 6yr old son has adapt 2 the way his sister’s talk and sometimes has 2 translate 2 me!i definatley believe twin have the ability 2 commuicate in their own langauge which both unique and fasinating.
I am a twin. I am 25 years old, and i still have a secret language with my sister. My mother, nor my other sisters have been able to break the code although they have tried.
My brother, Jem (his real name is Jake but I don’t think I ever call him that) and I are third generation twins (My mother and grandmother also have twins)and that may be why my twin and I were always encouraged in our twin ways. We learned English just fine, because we have three older siblings we still have to talk to, but we do speak in our special language to one another (interestingly, neither our mother nor our grandmother or their respective twins can understand us, and we cannot understand them when they speak their language).
My identical twin girls were adopted from china at the age of 15 months. they used to combine baby language like Ga-Ga with simple English words such as the, he, she, a, did.. as well as random words that we thought were Chinese but our Chinese friend who is very fluent had a direct answer of “for the last time, it is NOT part of the Chinese language”. What was also funny was that words always ended in “a” and had no other vowels, just a.They are now fifteen and still use the language called diabasheaia (dia-ba-she-a-ia). They never share it with friends and only speak it with the door locked or when home alone…etc…It is a mystery but we have just let them do it all these years.
When me and my twin brother were babies we would talk to eachother in our own language. both my parents and my grandmother told me this. i feel very special to be a twin because when i look at my brother it makes me relise that hes the only person in the world that i share the exact same DNA strands.
hey! im a 14 year old twin and only just recently my identical twin and i have found out how to use our twin launguage and also twin telepathy were we can send vibes and images to eachouther without looking or talking
its truly amazing
aachee means thankyou bye
Im a fraternal twin and my sister and I are 23 now. We didnt have a full language but when we were young we had a word that we used with each other that we developed before we could say any other words. It was something like “ga-ga goo-guy” and if either of us said it we would immediately stop what we were doing and swap (swap toys, swap places, etc). We also quite often have ‘shared memories’ which im really interested to know if any other twins have experienced. One of us will start explaining a story of something that happened to them when we were younger, some kind of memory, and the other will interupt and insist that it happened to them! Very frustrating!
Stacy i know what you mean! My twin sister and I have the exact same problem with the shared memory thing. We always argue(really only a serous discussion, we hardly ever fight) over one in particular that is about which of us got the yellow dressed bunny rabbit from our babysitter one year for our birthdays(i say birthdays because we were born on separate days). We had our own secret language as well, however, we only remember very little of it now. our mom told us a story of when we were toddlers she was watching us play in the yard through the window and one of us was examining a stick. she said that my sister called me over to her with some kind of babble. she said that i ran to her and that we started talking very quickly to one another while examining the stick very intently. that must have been one interesting stick!
Comment by Summer Cole — December 10, 2009 @ 11:15 am
I agree that twins have their own language. I have twin girls aged 11 months and always babble and a message is passed. Their favourite word is “thatha”
My identical twin Ricky & I used twinspeak from infancy until about age 4. According to older relatives, it wasn’t gutteral grunting, laughing, and incoherent babbling. Ours was perceived as fully conversational, developed & multi-syllabolic, with standard changes in inflection, and the up & down pitches which clearly defined what was being said. As they descibed it, it was like listening to two people speaking a foreign language and associated body language fluently. They could easily identify; when a question was being asked, when one was teasing or a joking to the other, when one of us found a statement made by the other intriging or thought provoking. But it drove them crazy because they couldn’t figure out what we were saying and we refused to translate our “private conversations” to unwelcome eavesdroppers. We certainly didn’t speak twinspeak to them, because we wanted to keep our conversations private. So we suffered to only revert to “their language” when we talked to others. The only time we ever used our twinspeak with outsiders was one instance when at about age 3, we had an impromptu playdate with another set of twins (girls). From what we’ve been told from those that were there, after about a half hour or so of being left together in the playroom, the adults came back to find all four of us engaged in a running “twinspeak” dialogue which totally weirded them out. Particularly the other set’s mother as her girls didn’t engage much in twinspeak before, but afterwards she had a hard time getting them to go back to English.
Around age 4 We weren’t allowed to use it after that. We were told it was rude to speak another language that nobody else could understand, but we figured the “real reason” was due to our admittedly anti-social attitude with our younger brother. Because we didn’t like him contantly intruding on OUR play & bonding. We still tried to engage in twinspeak on the sly for a while, however, getting whippings from our dad kinda took the charm out of it. Once our new sister was old enough to join “the boys” in play, that at least solved “One” little problem, as we could just drag bro over to play with sissy if he began to annoy us. We also would have “panic attacks” when ever someone would try to separate us. The worst was starting 2nd grade. The school decided to put us into seperate classes because of our tendency to avoid socializing with the other kids. We also had to go the school speech therapist to further drum the twinspeak out of us.
We no longer twinspeak, yet over the years we frequently experience several other “twin oddities”, such as; a) Feeling each other’s pain – even when we were thousands of miles apart, which on numberous occaissians has prompted a long-distance phone call to find out; “Okay, what the heck is going on with your (insert body part here)? Mine is driving me bonkers & I know I didn’t have anything happen that could explain why.” b) Finishing each other’s sentences or blurting out the same statement at the same time. d) We often appear(?) to be subconsciously reading each other’s minds at times, often silly things like suddenly humming a tune over the phone that the other had just listened to before the call. (The kind of stuff that creeps out other & often surprizes even us. An old inside joke developed from bro’s wife apprehensions as to whether I ever “picked up” on it when they were being “intimate”. I assured her that I certainly never found myself experiencing any “unexplainable sensations” while at work or home watching the news, so they are probably safe there.) e) Nobody can ever tell us apart over the phone, although science says one should expect regional & environmental dialect adaptions, seeing as we’ve spent a total of around 28 years apart from each other & we don’t talk on the phone very often. Still, at age 50, we “2 clones” still feel very close & share 90% of the same interests.
There was another point I should bring out that can occur with identical twins; Sychronization. We were born long before there there was ultrasound and other advanced methods to detect multiple births. We were preemies and from the third trimester up to our birthdate, nobody ever suspected Mom was carrying twins. Her doctor always only heard what he though was a single strong heartbeat, not even a hint of an “echo”. We were in perfect sync. Two minutes after the delivery of my just over 3-pound twin, as the hospital staff were cleaning up & preparing to wheel Mom out of the delivery room, her labor pains returned with a vengence. She told the nurse & was duly informed; “Mrs B___, You’ve already had your baby…” Mom replied she had best tell the doctor to get @$$ back in here because she is neither stupid, nor an idiot & something is definitely going on down there. The doctor came in & after an initial quick check, at first didn’t have any explanation, then reaching in to humor her he felt a pair of legs. (I was a breech birth. It’s probably fortunate for the both of us that my brother had been born first as it made for a relatively easy delivery for a breech birth, even though I had a couple of pounds on my brother.) The doctor didn’t even have to turn me around.) After a couple minutes, out I popped.
Being twins has always been fun, though we couldn’t get away with pretending to be each other to trick people like other identicals due to our differences in height & weight. We are often asked if there was every any sibling rivalry between the two of us. There wasn’t, but to humor them we used to invent stories & pretend it was absolutely horrible. Since I was always bigger, I was always “The Evil Twin” who made his life a living Hell. Supposedly I kept him short by constantly bopping him on the head stealing his food. Likewise my twin has a slightly different take on our birth. Rick tells people I’m to blame for him being smaller & his 3-pound birth weigh – He claims I would get bored in the womb, so I entertained myself by squeezing his umbilical cord until he turned purple & his eyes bulged out. As for him being a full head shorter & our 1.5-month premature birth – He points to my breech birth as evidence that after 7 months I got tired of having to share the same space, so I climbed up on top, braced myself against Mom’s ribcage & pushed him out. Of course, I didn’t come out immediately. Once he was out of the way, it was my intention to lounge in there as if it were nature’s “Lazyboy(C) recliner”. The doc had to go in there & drag me out by the feet kicking & screaming like a priest forcing out a demon.
A note to parents of twins; I don’t know if it is true of all identical twins, yet I’ve heard that it is not uncommon for twin synchronicity to go beyond just heartbeats like we did. As infants, apparently our metabolism remained in sync even though my brother remained in incubation for two months after I was strong enough to leave & we were moved to separate bedrooms, presumably so that one wouldn’t wake, or keep up the other. Nevertheless; a) We usually cried at the same time. b) We tended to fall asleep at the same time. c) If one of us was hungry, within seconds the other would be. d) If one had soiled their diaper, the other needed changed as well. Fortunately, as our Dad was away in the Navy, Mom remained living with her parents & siblings, so there were additional hands that could lend a hand.
Hey! I’m a fraternal twin and my sister, we’re almost twenty know, we’re also triples but he passed away after only twenty-four hours. our mother use to tell us about how, when we were young, we’d talk to each other or one of us would be playing with a toy and then hand it to the other with out a word. Like most twins, we were belayed in speak and movement skills, we keep the language until we’re about three years old. Even know, we still have little things that we do and other people just don’t understand us. We share each others emotions and can feel what the other feels, whether it be sick or tiredness. We share a vary strong bond that is almost like we’re identical, we can even guess what the other is thinking or end up doing the same thing.
My twin and I both share early memories of talking to each other. It sounds strange and slightly abstract seeing as, if they’re real memories, we must have been really young at the time, but it was like reading each others body language but through their voice patterns. There’s one word we used that our parents now use in daily life, that we used as a greeting and even though that particular part of our supposed language was only carried through to our childhood by our parents, my brother and i always felt a kind of recognition towards the word. “Agway” to y’all by the way.
I HAVE TWIN BOYS 19 M OLD AND I AM WORRIED ABOUT THEM BECAUSE THEY JUST SAY DA DA DA MA MA MA, I WANT WHEN THE SHOULD START TALKING, SHOULD I TAKE THEM TO SPECIALIST OR WAIT TILL THEY GO TO TODDLERS SCHOOL, PLEASE HELP ME
My twins have me so baffled sometimes. I have identical twin boys and they are bilingual to begin with. My husband speaks Finnish to them and I speak English. So we sometimes struggle with if they are speaking English, Finnish or a combination of both and then the mistakes that they pick up on from each other….it can be a real challenge sometimes. I love them to pieces, but sometimes I just look at them and say “what did you just say” completely baffled.
I do find that they care more about each other’s permission to get into mischief more than mom and dads. One often has a great idea that includes trouble. He then asks the other one over and over again until he gets the desired response from his brother and then they go get into trouble together. Funny to watch, a pain to clean up!
I am not a twin but shared the twin-talk phenomenon with my brother (12 months older). According to our parents we began a ‘private’ language when I was about 4 months old. By the time I was four, my brother only used our language and I translated completely for him. When my brother went to school the speech teachers forced us to stop using our language for my brother’s sake. This was a difficult time because I used to think that I was reading my brother’s mind. When this was taken from me, I felt like a family member had died. There is a definite emotional side to this language bond that speech teacher don’t consider and parents need to be aware of.
Comment by Tammi Halbert — March 19, 2010 @ 5:13 pm
I AM a twin, we are identical twin girls, and right now we’re 13 years old. We have our own language, but we made it up when we were about 10 just so we could talk at school and such about anything. (like boys, gossip, or anything else.) It was very fun once we actually became fluent in it and we called the language Rocca.
I am a 25 year old female identical twin, who has a significant language with my sister! We use the word “meesh” quite often. “Meesh, about the times.” haha…I bet you have no clue what that means do ya!?
I have fratenal twin grandsons 30 months old there is a definate twin talk between them. They are saying sae plain english words but mainly the own language. We feel like we r missing out big time on some of there stories.
I am a parent of identical twin boys. They are 4 years old now and I believe that they have their own language or yat least used to before they could speak English. It had a lot of the “g” sound in it. Today they still call each other “ga ga” and one will cry if the other gets hurt or in trouble worse than the one that is really hurt.
Hello, I am a fraturnal twin and 14 years old. I still to the day still twin talk with my sister. I dont do it in public, at least not loud anough for anyone to hear. My sister and i do speak english with our twin talk. We add letters and pronunciate differently. Example : ” Why cant you undastand meh” Okay now ” Why Cannnt you undaaastond mehhz” I never talk like that in public and never had problems learning english and speaking it. The only thing i would say i have now is voice breaks and i can’t speak fluently with a mature voice.
I am a fratural and still talk to my twin with twin talk. I am 14 now. I have never had problems learning proper and never had any speech therapy. I just wanted to point out this to parents with twins that twin talk, “It’s normal” My mother read to my sister and i alot and she talked to us alot. You cant really prevent it, but you can help it by just making sure your children learn english as well. When i twin talk with my sister i only do it alone or infront of my mother, and sometimes father (although they think we talk like we have mental problems.) My twin talk is mostly english with different pronunciations and added letters at the end of words ex: “z” “s”) I dont talk like that in public at least not loud enough for anyone to hear.
I can’t say that i can ever stop my twin talk but i don’t care what anybody thinks of it. I am who i am, cant help it.
Also, since we are on a twins site, do you ever notice that twins seem to like eachother more than their other siblings? I just wanted to know if i am the only one that feels that way. I don’t mean to sound b****y but it is true.
Thanks! -Raelynn
My sister and I are only one minute apart. Growing up she and I had our own language. My mother had thought nothing of it. Well, naturally, we were both placed in the same classes, begining in pre-school. When we reached 2nd grade, the teachers and school personel had brought some concerns to my mothers attention. They wanted to separate us, mainly because they felt it to be a challenge to try to cipher our “language”. Well, being apart from my sister over the course of 8 hours a day for a period of 4 years, she and I just stopped talking in our own little language. I feel that it took something great, something powerful away from us. Some of that connection that we had, sadly was now gone.
I’m a mother of 2year old fraternal twins (Francisco and Xavier). The only times that i’ve seen them talk or even facial or hand gestures that probably are there own language is when they are not aware that i’m looking at them or they are so occupied in what they are doing they forget i’m there. It’s very interesting in seeing them understand each other perfectly and laughing of something no one else knows about. Infront of people they talk cleared with words. It’s a great reward to see them connect and feel they have something magical.
I am the mother of identical twin boys who were born in 1969. My children were not premature (weighed 7 lbs each), nor were they brain-damaged. They simply began to speak their own language to each other (and to me) very early. By the time they were 2 1/2, they did not speak a word of English, only their own language (which I understood and responded to). I figured that the only way I could force them to speak English was to put them in a daycare setting where they would be forced to communicate in English in order to make their needs known. It worked. After being in daycare for about 6 mos. (while I was working as a nurse) they began to speak perfectly acceptable English for 3-yr-olds. In later years, when the boys were IQ tested, they were well above normal intelligence. Today, they are 41, married, college graduates, and each of them has two children. I think it is wrong to assume that simply because twins speak their own language that they are less than normal. My experience indicates that twins who are well socialized early in their development will give up twin speech and communicate normally with others.
Comment by Sandra Kennedy — September 15, 2010 @ 8:37 pm
I’m a 25 year old twin and my other half and I do have a secret language.
We can look at each other and know what the other one is thinking and trying to say,
whenever we have outing plans we always dress alike(even in colour),the more we try to not be alike,the more we are, even our names are alike,
we live in different places in our own homes.how would the one know what the other is thinking if not for our telepathy?
I always pack an extra outfit in case we dress alike which happens every time. We even dress our kids alike!
Our kids look like trippelets,people tend to think they have one mom!
I love being part of someone and when people ask us the obvious(we are identical)question if we’re twins, we simply respond by saying;
No-we are identical strangers! (Verity and Verine’)
Comment by Verity Engel — September 27, 2010 @ 5:44 am
Our twins seem to say a few words that only they understand, however I agree with most of the comments that a lot of it is non-verbal. Gestures and signals seem to be a big part of their understood communication, but we are always wondering how much of it is only because they are the same age. We are lucky in that we have been able to raise all of our children at home, so we don’t have the experience of day care with similarly aged children to make the comparison. We’d rather keep thinking they are deeply connected anyway…
Yes, absolutely! My 2 year old twin boys have names for each other and talk together in their own language which they each understand. When I catch them with their heads together talking or calling each other and ask them, they laugh at me and won’t tell me. It’s their secret. Anyone who says twins don’t share a language clearly hasn’t spent much time with twins:) Especially when they’re up to no good!
I have identical twin girls that were mono-amniotic/mono-chorionic(MoMo), which means that they had skin to skin contact in the womb and they will be 2 in December. They were 7 weeks early and both almost 6LBS each. The younger one says more words than the older(only a minute apart)and she speaks clearer. She also walks a lot better too and is smaller. I believe they have their own language. They can be sitting there all quiet and look at each other and laugh, their 4yr old brother can’t understand them either. And they babble a lot to each other, especially before bed. They also feel each others pain. One day a few weeks ago Aubrey(the younger one)fell and bit through her bottom lip, later that night I was putting them to bed and noticed a dark red mark right in the same place on Emmalee’s chin as where Aubrey had bit herself. They do however have different personalities. Emmalee is more dramatic and Aubrey is more mellow. Other than a slight weight difference they are 100% identical in looks but I don’t dress them identical! Raising twins is so fun but so different than just one.
My mother and her identical twin, both now dead, did not have speacial language, but they could carry on a conversation by both talking at the same time. They could actually hear and understand each other while talking themselves, so didn’t have to take turns.
Comment by thecla geraghty — November 22, 2010 @ 5:53 am
The myth of twin language , is that it is a myth. I am a twin. My twin and I shared a complex language as young children and continue to use several words and phrases in situations that we wish to communicate without easedropping or commentary from others. Ie. When we are talking in a resteraunt or in the presence of our children. Sorry if the scientists missed that part of their childhood…we did not! Lol. No we were not isolated , we had a mutual best friend that we spent hours with.
9. We’re a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site offered us with valuable information to work on. You’ve done an impressive job and our entire community will be grateful to you.
HAHA! My twin girls Stacey and Macey are IDENTICAL ! They say a lot at the same time and look identical, they also have a ton of the same clothes! Even I get the girls mixed up a majority of the time!
Comment by Jana Neyland — February 18, 2011 @ 10:10 pm
Good Morning,
I work at the BBC in London and we are looking for twins who can still speak their own language for a new TV show.
I know a lot of twins have this when they are younger but the twins we are looking for will need to be over 18. If anyone here knows of a pair of twins that are still able to speak their own language at an older age then please get in touch.
Comment by Paul Braund — February 28, 2011 @ 6:56 am
hi i have a twin sister name tyler mines is taylor we are 18 years old and westill have our secret language that we only know about. its cool that nobody else knoe what were talking about except my older brother. he understands everything
I have 7 year old identical twin boys and they had a language that they spoke between them when they were younger. However, I was very vocal with them and never used baby words but talked to them about everything as we did household chores, errands, or played. Whatever we did, I spoke to them describing to them what I was doing or what was around us. They speak very well today and have knowledge of many more vocabulary words than is usual for their age. They started speaking at what was appropriate for their age levels. They definitely had their own language between them and they both seemed to undertand each other similar to the twins in the video. Their teachers also say they have great auditory skills for their age (above age level), with great comprehension when spoken to.
I am an identical twin. I have some memories of when I was little and my twin and I would play with dolls and speak in some odd language, and we had no trouble doing that before…but as we grew older and learned more English, we had to stop each other and ask what they were saying. I don’t know for sure if we had our own language, but we sure talked to each other in some type of way that we could understand each other and form strategies (like getting to the first floor of our apartment building when we lived on the top floor)
I am a twin recently turned 18 and me and my brother could relate to this. Me and my brother don’t really have a language but we can say something completey irrelevent to what we mean and understand what one of is is saying.
I have twin niece who still speak twin talk. They have been doing it since they were babie and now dont even realize that they do it. They will be in a group with a bunch of friends but when they look at each other, these two girls start speaking a language that nobody understands but them.
identical twin girls they are 4 years &2 months they are in reception class now ,i observe them doing lot of the same things for example when i went shoping with them they like the same dress or the same toys or shoes & in school as well they playing with the same friends but iam still not sure if they are 100% identical ,after all i feel lucky & iam so happy with them.
I have two friends that are twins and I noticed that when one gets hurt the other seens to automatically know and mutter to her when helping. The youngest of the two seems to mutter gibberish aimlessly to the other when she’s not paying attention. Saying things like “Atta” for thank you or “sata” as if for ‘are you okay’.
My identical twin and I are now 61 years old. We DO have a language that others cannot understand that was developed at a very young age…although my grand daughters are learning it!!! They love “twin talk!”
My identical twin sister and I did speak in “twinnese” as my parents called it when we were kids. We spoke it so often that our parents sent us to a school to teach us to get us to speak English instead of “twinnese”. Course now I only remember two words “Thika” which was pillow that my mom told me and “Didi” which was our word when referring to each other
My twin boys are 3 years old and they make up words and for some reason they understand each other. The newest word is “sheegee” and as soon as they say that they start to race. They will run touch the wall and then return from where they started. I think it’s pretty neat and and interesting just to see them interact with each other.
I am a 45 yr old identical twin. Yes, I remember being a young age in a high-chair talking with my twin Julie, and mom said to our sitter, “I think they know what they are saying to each other.” This is and odd memory for me but we still talk about it. I told mom, yes, we did know and we understood you too. !!!!!
I am a twin and my sister found this website to find more info. About us! When she saw the twin language part she told me to write a comment about it. So here I go. When we were little we talked in 1 language an that was our own. It wasn’t English at least that’s what I was told. I only remember a bit. But I knew it was fun to have our own language. And it was also he’d bc nO body understood us and we were confused about that… We thought we were talking about that but really only we understood each other. I remember it took us years to talk normal. Till like 3grade that we could talk with clear speech. So yeah ur twins will be fine as lOng as you keep workin with them. But remember just to let ur twins have fun with it. Twins share a special bond and let me just say…it’s awesome;)
Hi, I have not identical twins boys. They turned 3 this month, and don’t speak yet. They can say some words, like apple, ball, bubbles, mama, papa and that’s it. Of course like all twins they have their own language. Maybe because in the house they expose to two completely different languages – mother is russian, father is english. They understand russian, but say words in english. Maybe somebody had the same problem, if yes, how did you come over it.
I am a twin too – 47 (identical) and one of my earliest memories is of my sister Julie and I sitting side by side in our double wide stroller going down the grocery aisle with mom. I remember hearing people talk and not knowing what they were saying. I, through mental telepathy I assume, communicated to my sister, “hey, let’s make up our own language and let them know we can talk too” and so we went back and forth and seemed to understand each other. I have always thought it is somehow related to baby talk and in fact, babies usually respond when I resort back to that language.
Comment by Jeanne Nielson — July 18, 2012 @ 3:13 pm
I have twin boys of 2 and half and they have just started what i believe to be a twin language.They can both speak very well and have done since around 1year old.they speak very clearly and engage in conversation with adults and children alike.but recently they have began communicating with one another in a talk which nobody can understand exept them.it is a lovely melodic speak,lilting up and down,ending in open ended questions to which the other answers, they laugh and seem to disagree etc. when i have interupted and tried to work out what they are discussing, they start speaking normally again to me and each other, tel me about what they were discussing and when i leave them to it, start up with the twin chatter again!its an amazing thing to hear, and i have no doubts about speech delay or anything for now or the future,they both speak lovely english and can sign quite a bit too(which they also use with eachother)very cute and makes me very proud if not a bit jealous!
I am 52 year old identical twin. My sister and I shared our own private language when toddlers. But I also remember knowing what she was saying without any words. I remember specific incident in cribs one night.
I have twin 2.5 yr old girls. They have spoken in their own language since they were able to talk. Interestingly enough, the words they chose, were nonsense words that a slightly older child was using at the time. So at 1, they were saying “sickle sickle dado dado dikkadikka” to each other. They picked these terms up from a 2.5 yr old friend of theirs who called a stroller a “dado” an iphone a “dikkadikka” and a tricycle a “sickle”. My girls were very pleased to “talk” to eachother their “big girl”. It has resulted in some difficulties with them being behind in language skills but they are coming along slowly as they realize that while it might not be as fun to talk to mommy, sometimes you have to in order to get what you want!
Hi, I am a 14 year old male identical twin. My twin and I had words for things that we both used like atta for example which meant light. However when we were 7 or 8 years old, we started speaking in Pig Latin. It is great because we can talk to each other in front of everybody, and they have no clue what we are saying. (We speak it really fast).
Hi, I am a 14 year old male identical twin. My twin and I had words for things that we both used like atta for example which meant light. However when we were 7 or 8 years old, we started speaking in Pig Latin. It is great because we can talk to each other in front of everybody, and they have no clue what we are saying. (We speak it really fast).We also finish each other sentences. The coolest thing is my brother might have a song in his head, and then I will start singing it in the exact same spot! (Or vice-versa).
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I think my children (oldest singleton included) must be pretty right brained… Language was always the first to come- They could speak in sentences before they were two.. (but didn’t do to good with puzzles and stuff) We did notice how they did help each other along with language. They would practice theier new words with each other and practice responding.. etc..
Comment by Chris — October 23, 2007 @ 8:33 am
My twin boys share a secret language since they were 2 yrs old. They are now 3 1/2 and they still talk thier secret language to each other. They will talk normally to adults but sometimes they will talk their special language to other children, which these children look at my twins kind of funny. Idon’t know if they will ever outgrown this.
Comment by pauline — October 23, 2007 @ 9:10 am
My twin girls had their own language, and the 3rd (Irish triplet) born 15 months after learned it too; the twins didn’t bother learning our speech until the youngest did it on her own. It became a problem in school, they didn’t know how to communicate to others what had or was happening (and less astute teachers believed the 3 year olds stories-resulting in CPS issues-don’t get me started). The school suggested speech therapy which has helped. They have repeated kindergarten this year, we want them to have a good foundation. I’ve tried to explain it to the school that in addition to learning the languages of numbers and letters, the twins had to learn English too. It was a tough year for them. So now, we have 3 girls, all in kindergarten (everyone has a different teacher). The twins continue speech therapy, one struggles with proper pronoun usages, but we’re getting there. While the twin talk is cute and unique, there are issues to overcome later when school comes into the picture.
Comment by Dodi — October 23, 2007 @ 9:19 am
I have twin boy and girl. Yes, they share a language.They have a laughing problem.When the 2 of them starts laughing they won’t stop.Noone can make them stop.The funny part is that noone knows what they are laughing about.So it makes everyone else laugh.
Comment by jamie — October 23, 2007 @ 6:01 pm
I have identical twin boys, now 7. When they were infants they communicated with what we referred to as “twin speak”.I guess you could describe it as a grunting noise, but it was the “ping” and “pong” type respose that caught our attention. They were definitely communicating on some level. It seemed to comfort them to know that the other was close by.
Comment by Marie — October 23, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
The film ‘Nell’ is about the survivor of a pair of twins who kept their twin talk into adulthood, mixed with Biblical archaisms and the mother’s aphasic speech.
Also look up June and Jennifer Gibbons, and “Poto and Cabengo” (Grace and Virginia Kennedy).
Comment by Jay Young — November 14, 2007 @ 4:43 pm
my twins don’t really talk to eachother in this language but one of them in particular has his own words for things even though he is quite capable and understands language, however, recently I’ve noticed that the other one is using Ashie’s language for things even though Ozzie is quite capable of saying words and phrases also. And we have started to use Ashie’s language aswell. These are his words for things.
Doombah = Daddy
Wah Wah = Mummy
Owah = shoes/slippers/socks
Oddot (silent ‘t’) = Ozzie (real name Ocean) his twin
Mm Mm = Birdy (real name Phoenix) his 3 year old brother
Mat man = Kal his 19year old brother
whoo whoo = train
He used to have a name for dog but he doesn’t use that any more.
Comment by nikki — April 9, 2008 @ 3:41 pm
I have twin boys who are 6yrs old and they still speak in twin. We have tried very hard to help them and so as the school they are in but i think they dont even relise they are doing it. They started to talk fine at around 18mth and then started to talk in this way we didn,t get. They have got much better over the last 12mths but i wonder if they will ever talk properly. My problem is how hard it is to get any help for it. From the age of 2 i got told they would grow out of it. At the age of 3 and a half they have started having speech therepy but they only get 45mins once a week for 10 sessions and the sessions can be 10 over 16wks. I think this is awful. After 10 sessions they go back on a waiting list for 5mth. I have tried everything to get more help for the boys i even went to the papers but that didnt really help it just make them look like freaks. All i get is its just their speech. Kids with this problem need so much more help than they get and it leaves me wondering how old they have to get before they will get any real help.
Comment by Hayley — April 13, 2008 @ 4:51 pm
I have 15 month old twin boys. They speak to eachother more then they speak to us, they seem to know what eachother is thinking before an action is made. When I ask one a question he tends to look at the other for advice or approval, then he will respond with a babble of some sort. I believe that they have been able to communicate with one another since before they were born.
Comment by Angel — September 10, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
My youngest set of twins DID have their own talk. They are 15 and still say thing that no one understands but themselves. I don’t think it’s a myth. I think most scientist or other “we know what we’re talking about” people just don’t want to believe it.
Comment by Kim — September 30, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
My 4 yr old boys do not share a twin language, they share twin vocabs. Like, ‘a-cheh’ is thank you and ‘boom boom’ refers to a bike. No amount of family intervention can correct this. ‘Acheh’ and ‘boom boom’ is now part of our family vocab. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Comment by Linda — September 30, 2008 @ 9:02 pm
Yes, twins do have there own language, I have 2 1/2yrs olds girls and at night before they go to bed they have conversations with each other… they can understand it, but we can’t!
Comment by Jackie — October 9, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
Yes, I have 4 year old twins, and and I thought at one time they had a developmental problem, until a doctor told me about twin talk, they communicate to each other in their own languange and sometimes if they want to tell me a secret it would be in twin talk, as if I understand what they are talking about.They did not develop “real words” until they were about 21/2. They still have some communication issues but they are now bi-lingual.
Comment by rana — October 14, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
I have twin grandaughters, and yes, they have a language all their own. They are almost 3.5 years old now. It’s the funniest thing to listen to because they talk really fast when they do it as though it’s a real language. I suppose for them it is.
Comment by Marty — November 13, 2008 @ 9:26 am
I have an identical twin sister. And all my life my parents told us that when we were babies we had our own language that we would speak to eachother. This only happened when no one was around. When we would be left in our cribs opposite sides of the room, my parents would come to wake us up from our sleep and find us standing up, looking at eachother and talking very fast. And they said we almost seemed angry sometimes. And when my parents would come in we would stop instantly. I love this story. Because now at 21 years old, we still communicate differently. And i dont have to explain most things because she finishes my sentence or my thoughts. We trip out about it all the time.
Comment by Natasha — December 22, 2008 @ 8:18 pm
I have an identical twin we are now 22 and our parents said we had a very specific way of commuicating with one another and still do…they had us in speech therpy and seperate classes at school until junior high.. But still till this day i think its just the bond one has with ones twin that outsiders dont understand there for try to put an explanation on it when really all that is needed to know is a twin is a twin you spend nine months in the same women your bound to have an amazing closeness to one another. Like the girl above me said my sister and i have a way of knowin what the other feels and sometimes thinks it trips us out to we go to seperate collages in different states now but we still have an unbreakable bond..
Comment by Christy — January 19, 2009 @ 6:32 pm
My twin and I are 25 and our speech with each other seems to get more and more shortened and replaced with sounds or facial expressions. We can be across a room full of people and have a whole conversation just with facial expressions and no ones the wiser.
I dont even call her by her real name, twice this week talking to my mom and my brother i mentioned her nickname and they both said who????? I’ve been calling her that for years!
I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, being able to have someone go through a lot fo the same experiences and understand you on such a deep level is amazing.
Comment by amanda — February 7, 2009 @ 7:36 am
i think that twins do have a secret language. im a twin and also have twins of my own. they definately communicate with each other. i believe firmly that one undersyands the other. my twin sister and i can also carry a conversation strictly through facial expressions.
Comment by jocelyn jones — February 23, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
me and my sister are twins and we used to have a language we would say random made up words and we could completely understand, we would also draw random pics of lines and we thought they were wonderful and sometimes breakout laughing in histericts.
sometimes we have the same dreams too
Comment by hannah — February 28, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
I have identical twin boys who are nearly 3 and they do have there own language they can get the sounds of real words out to adults but i have to get them to say it a few times before i know what they are saying but they just talk to each other in thier own way and their older brother can understand them so i know what they want but i dont know whether or not to seek help from a speech therapist or wait for them to learn naturally has anyone else found this problem with theier twins?
Comment by Lauren Roberts — March 13, 2009 @ 4:36 am
My identical twin brother and I had a language of our own. We didn’t play well with other kids (I liked hitting people and he was very shy), but we always played together perfectly, so when our parents brought us places to play with other kids, like a playground or something, we would just sit somewhere off by ourselves and talk to each other. We both did some speech therapy when we got to school age, but continued using our “language” and weren’t made fun of because we were homeschooled by our mum. Now we’re sixteen, we still use the language at home (and out in public too! we aren’t embarassed by it). We’ve gotten better at making friends, but we never do things seperately (i.e. I have a sleepover at a girlfriend’s house while my brother does something with his guy friends), because both of us get panic attacks when away from each other. We have a really strong bond, sometimes almost too strong, but we both love it. The people we hang out with call us the “Creepy Twins” as a joke. We don’t really mind, the only opinion that really matters to either of us is each other’s.
~ Bella
Comment by Bella — March 29, 2009 @ 8:56 am
I am a triplet and my sister, brother, and I, when we were around 2 or 3, would sit in a circle and talk in this weird language. One day my mom decided to try and talk with us, and we all just started staring then laughed at her. I am now 14 and I just thought is was pretty cool how we had our own language. *peace*
Comment by bethany — April 23, 2009 @ 12:33 am
I have twin 2 year old girls who without a doubt have their own way of communicating with each other. Both have suffered hearing loss to different degrees. They both have been taught sign language as well as verbal language. I have watched them talk to each other while playing ask for things. They will use the correct sign with me but when they are talking to each other, it is a different sign. Even the words they speak are different between adults and themselves. It is amazing to see. The younger of my twins has seizures and the older twin always can tell when it is coming on. She comes and gets me or will sound the alarm. I firmly believe they do have ways to talk to each other. And they do NOT like to be apart.
Comment by Becka — May 9, 2009 @ 12:43 pm
i have twin girls that are 4yrs old and reguardless of what “professionals” may say about twin talk being a myth unless they have twins in a day in day out situation what do they really know!! my girls talk 2 each other in twin talk which is lovely 2 watch,they understand each other perfectly while other’s can’t. my 6yr old son has adapt 2 the way his sister’s talk and sometimes has 2 translate 2 me!i definatley believe twin have the ability 2 commuicate in their own langauge which both unique and fasinating.
Comment by sara — May 20, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
I am a twin. I am 25 years old, and i still have a secret language with my sister. My mother, nor my other sisters have been able to break the code although they have tried.
Comment by Tiffany — June 11, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
My brother, Jem (his real name is Jake but I don’t think I ever call him that) and I are third generation twins (My mother and grandmother also have twins)and that may be why my twin and I were always encouraged in our twin ways. We learned English just fine, because we have three older siblings we still have to talk to, but we do speak in our special language to one another (interestingly, neither our mother nor our grandmother or their respective twins can understand us, and we cannot understand them when they speak their language).
Comment by Sha and Jem — July 14, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
My identical twin girls were adopted from china at the age of 15 months. they used to combine baby language like Ga-Ga with simple English words such as the, he, she, a, did.. as well as random words that we thought were Chinese but our Chinese friend who is very fluent had a direct answer of “for the last time, it is NOT part of the Chinese language”. What was also funny was that words always ended in “a” and had no other vowels, just a.They are now fifteen and still use the language called diabasheaia (dia-ba-she-a-ia). They never share it with friends and only speak it with the door locked or when home alone…etc…It is a mystery but we have just let them do it all these years.
Comment by Kara — August 17, 2009 @ 6:55 pm
When me and my twin brother were babies we would talk to eachother in our own language. both my parents and my grandmother told me this. i feel very special to be a twin because when i look at my brother it makes me relise that hes the only person in the world that i share the exact same DNA strands.
Comment by shane dunning — September 1, 2009 @ 11:48 pm
hey! im a 14 year old twin and only just recently my identical twin and i have found out how to use our twin launguage and also twin telepathy were we can send vibes and images to eachouther without looking or talking
its truly amazing
aachee means thankyou bye
Comment by alex — September 17, 2009 @ 3:39 am
Im a fraternal twin and my sister and I are 23 now. We didnt have a full language but when we were young we had a word that we used with each other that we developed before we could say any other words. It was something like “ga-ga goo-guy” and if either of us said it we would immediately stop what we were doing and swap (swap toys, swap places, etc). We also quite often have ‘shared memories’ which im really interested to know if any other twins have experienced. One of us will start explaining a story of something that happened to them when we were younger, some kind of memory, and the other will interupt and insist that it happened to them! Very frustrating!
Comment by Stacey — December 7, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
Stacy i know what you mean! My twin sister and I have the exact same problem with the shared memory thing. We always argue(really only a serous discussion, we hardly ever fight) over one in particular that is about which of us got the yellow dressed bunny rabbit from our babysitter one year for our birthdays(i say birthdays because we were born on separate days). We had our own secret language as well, however, we only remember very little of it now. our mom told us a story of when we were toddlers she was watching us play in the yard through the window and one of us was examining a stick. she said that my sister called me over to her with some kind of babble. she said that i ran to her and that we started talking very quickly to one another while examining the stick very intently. that must have been one interesting stick!
Comment by Summer Cole — December 10, 2009 @ 11:15 am
I agree that twins have their own language. I have twin girls aged 11 months and always babble and a message is passed. Their favourite word is “thatha”
Comment by SYLVIA — December 23, 2009 @ 3:47 am
My identical twin Ricky & I used twinspeak from infancy until about age 4. According to older relatives, it wasn’t gutteral grunting, laughing, and incoherent babbling. Ours was perceived as fully conversational, developed & multi-syllabolic, with standard changes in inflection, and the up & down pitches which clearly defined what was being said. As they descibed it, it was like listening to two people speaking a foreign language and associated body language fluently. They could easily identify; when a question was being asked, when one was teasing or a joking to the other, when one of us found a statement made by the other intriging or thought provoking. But it drove them crazy because they couldn’t figure out what we were saying and we refused to translate our “private conversations” to unwelcome eavesdroppers. We certainly didn’t speak twinspeak to them, because we wanted to keep our conversations private. So we suffered to only revert to “their language” when we talked to others. The only time we ever used our twinspeak with outsiders was one instance when at about age 3, we had an impromptu playdate with another set of twins (girls). From what we’ve been told from those that were there, after about a half hour or so of being left together in the playroom, the adults came back to find all four of us engaged in a running “twinspeak” dialogue which totally weirded them out. Particularly the other set’s mother as her girls didn’t engage much in twinspeak before, but afterwards she had a hard time getting them to go back to English.
Around age 4 We weren’t allowed to use it after that. We were told it was rude to speak another language that nobody else could understand, but we figured the “real reason” was due to our admittedly anti-social attitude with our younger brother. Because we didn’t like him contantly intruding on OUR play & bonding. We still tried to engage in twinspeak on the sly for a while, however, getting whippings from our dad kinda took the charm out of it. Once our new sister was old enough to join “the boys” in play, that at least solved “One” little problem, as we could just drag bro over to play with sissy if he began to annoy us. We also would have “panic attacks” when ever someone would try to separate us. The worst was starting 2nd grade. The school decided to put us into seperate classes because of our tendency to avoid socializing with the other kids. We also had to go the school speech therapist to further drum the twinspeak out of us.
We no longer twinspeak, yet over the years we frequently experience several other “twin oddities”, such as; a) Feeling each other’s pain – even when we were thousands of miles apart, which on numberous occaissians has prompted a long-distance phone call to find out; “Okay, what the heck is going on with your (insert body part here)? Mine is driving me bonkers & I know I didn’t have anything happen that could explain why.” b) Finishing each other’s sentences or blurting out the same statement at the same time. d) We often appear(?) to be subconsciously reading each other’s minds at times, often silly things like suddenly humming a tune over the phone that the other had just listened to before the call. (The kind of stuff that creeps out other & often surprizes even us. An old inside joke developed from bro’s wife apprehensions as to whether I ever “picked up” on it when they were being “intimate”. I assured her that I certainly never found myself experiencing any “unexplainable sensations” while at work or home watching the news, so they are probably safe there.) e) Nobody can ever tell us apart over the phone, although science says one should expect regional & environmental dialect adaptions, seeing as we’ve spent a total of around 28 years apart from each other & we don’t talk on the phone very often. Still, at age 50, we “2 clones” still feel very close & share 90% of the same interests.
Comment by RockyB — February 9, 2010 @ 3:11 am
There was another point I should bring out that can occur with identical twins; Sychronization. We were born long before there there was ultrasound and other advanced methods to detect multiple births. We were preemies and from the third trimester up to our birthdate, nobody ever suspected Mom was carrying twins. Her doctor always only heard what he though was a single strong heartbeat, not even a hint of an “echo”. We were in perfect sync. Two minutes after the delivery of my just over 3-pound twin, as the hospital staff were cleaning up & preparing to wheel Mom out of the delivery room, her labor pains returned with a vengence. She told the nurse & was duly informed; “Mrs B___, You’ve already had your baby…” Mom replied she had best tell the doctor to get @$$ back in here because she is neither stupid, nor an idiot & something is definitely going on down there. The doctor came in & after an initial quick check, at first didn’t have any explanation, then reaching in to humor her he felt a pair of legs. (I was a breech birth. It’s probably fortunate for the both of us that my brother had been born first as it made for a relatively easy delivery for a breech birth, even though I had a couple of pounds on my brother.) The doctor didn’t even have to turn me around.) After a couple minutes, out I popped.
Being twins has always been fun, though we couldn’t get away with pretending to be each other to trick people like other identicals due to our differences in height & weight. We are often asked if there was every any sibling rivalry between the two of us. There wasn’t, but to humor them we used to invent stories & pretend it was absolutely horrible. Since I was always bigger, I was always “The Evil Twin” who made his life a living Hell. Supposedly I kept him short by constantly bopping him on the head stealing his food. Likewise my twin has a slightly different take on our birth. Rick tells people I’m to blame for him being smaller & his 3-pound birth weigh – He claims I would get bored in the womb, so I entertained myself by squeezing his umbilical cord until he turned purple & his eyes bulged out. As for him being a full head shorter & our 1.5-month premature birth – He points to my breech birth as evidence that after 7 months I got tired of having to share the same space, so I climbed up on top, braced myself against Mom’s ribcage & pushed him out. Of course, I didn’t come out immediately. Once he was out of the way, it was my intention to lounge in there as if it were nature’s “Lazyboy(C) recliner”. The doc had to go in there & drag me out by the feet kicking & screaming like a priest forcing out a demon.
A note to parents of twins; I don’t know if it is true of all identical twins, yet I’ve heard that it is not uncommon for twin synchronicity to go beyond just heartbeats like we did. As infants, apparently our metabolism remained in sync even though my brother remained in incubation for two months after I was strong enough to leave & we were moved to separate bedrooms, presumably so that one wouldn’t wake, or keep up the other. Nevertheless; a) We usually cried at the same time. b) We tended to fall asleep at the same time. c) If one of us was hungry, within seconds the other would be. d) If one had soiled their diaper, the other needed changed as well. Fortunately, as our Dad was away in the Navy, Mom remained living with her parents & siblings, so there were additional hands that could lend a hand.
Comment by RockyB — February 9, 2010 @ 4:52 am
Hey! I’m a fraternal twin and my sister, we’re almost twenty know, we’re also triples but he passed away after only twenty-four hours. our mother use to tell us about how, when we were young, we’d talk to each other or one of us would be playing with a toy and then hand it to the other with out a word. Like most twins, we were belayed in speak and movement skills, we keep the language until we’re about three years old. Even know, we still have little things that we do and other people just don’t understand us. We share each others emotions and can feel what the other feels, whether it be sick or tiredness. We share a vary strong bond that is almost like we’re identical, we can even guess what the other is thinking or end up doing the same thing.
Comment by Niccole — February 18, 2010 @ 3:24 pm
My twin and I both share early memories of talking to each other. It sounds strange and slightly abstract seeing as, if they’re real memories, we must have been really young at the time, but it was like reading each others body language but through their voice patterns. There’s one word we used that our parents now use in daily life, that we used as a greeting and even though that particular part of our supposed language was only carried through to our childhood by our parents, my brother and i always felt a kind of recognition towards the word. “Agway” to y’all by the way.
Comment by Julia C — February 19, 2010 @ 4:21 pm
I HAVE TWIN BOYS 19 M OLD AND I AM WORRIED ABOUT THEM BECAUSE THEY JUST SAY DA DA DA MA MA MA, I WANT WHEN THE SHOULD START TALKING, SHOULD I TAKE THEM TO SPECIALIST OR WAIT TILL THEY GO TO TODDLERS SCHOOL, PLEASE HELP ME
THANK YOU
Comment by ghizlane — March 2, 2010 @ 12:11 pm
My twins have me so baffled sometimes. I have identical twin boys and they are bilingual to begin with. My husband speaks Finnish to them and I speak English. So we sometimes struggle with if they are speaking English, Finnish or a combination of both and then the mistakes that they pick up on from each other….it can be a real challenge sometimes. I love them to pieces, but sometimes I just look at them and say “what did you just say” completely baffled.
I do find that they care more about each other’s permission to get into mischief more than mom and dads. One often has a great idea that includes trouble. He then asks the other one over and over again until he gets the desired response from his brother and then they go get into trouble together. Funny to watch, a pain to clean up!
Comment by Kari — March 12, 2010 @ 8:28 am
I am not a twin but shared the twin-talk phenomenon with my brother (12 months older). According to our parents we began a ‘private’ language when I was about 4 months old. By the time I was four, my brother only used our language and I translated completely for him. When my brother went to school the speech teachers forced us to stop using our language for my brother’s sake. This was a difficult time because I used to think that I was reading my brother’s mind. When this was taken from me, I felt like a family member had died. There is a definite emotional side to this language bond that speech teacher don’t consider and parents need to be aware of.
Comment by Tammi Halbert — March 19, 2010 @ 5:13 pm
I AM a twin, we are identical twin girls, and right now we’re 13 years old. We have our own language, but we made it up when we were about 10 just so we could talk at school and such about anything. (like boys, gossip, or anything else.) It was very fun once we actually became fluent in it and we called the language Rocca.
Comment by Hannah — April 10, 2010 @ 4:25 pm
I am identical twin we use mostly hand guesters to convay whole sentences, at a Party/Pub sometimes we do it without realizing it.
Comment by Shieldsy — April 30, 2010 @ 2:56 am
I am a 25 year old female identical twin, who has a significant language with my sister! We use the word “meesh” quite often. “Meesh, about the times.” haha…I bet you have no clue what that means do ya!?
Comment by Shannon — May 10, 2010 @ 6:39 pm
I have fratenal twin grandsons 30 months old there is a definate twin talk between them. They are saying sae plain english words but mainly the own language. We feel like we r missing out big time on some of there stories.
Comment by Carol — July 6, 2010 @ 3:35 am
Mine express to eachother but just use glances and facial expressions to say what they want to eachother. They also use made up words with eachother.
Comment by Ellie — July 23, 2010 @ 5:36 am
I am a parent of identical twin boys. They are 4 years old now and I believe that they have their own language or yat least used to before they could speak English. It had a lot of the “g” sound in it. Today they still call each other “ga ga” and one will cry if the other gets hurt or in trouble worse than the one that is really hurt.
Comment by Charity — September 1, 2010 @ 9:28 pm
Hello, I am a fraturnal twin and 14 years old. I still to the day still twin talk with my sister. I dont do it in public, at least not loud anough for anyone to hear. My sister and i do speak english with our twin talk. We add letters and pronunciate differently. Example : ” Why cant you undastand meh” Okay now ” Why Cannnt you undaaastond mehhz” I never talk like that in public and never had problems learning english and speaking it. The only thing i would say i have now is voice breaks and i can’t speak fluently with a mature voice.
Comment by Layla — September 5, 2010 @ 11:30 am
I am a fratural and still talk to my twin with twin talk. I am 14 now. I have never had problems learning proper and never had any speech therapy. I just wanted to point out this to parents with twins that twin talk, “It’s normal” My mother read to my sister and i alot and she talked to us alot. You cant really prevent it, but you can help it by just making sure your children learn english as well. When i twin talk with my sister i only do it alone or infront of my mother, and sometimes father (although they think we talk like we have mental problems.) My twin talk is mostly english with different pronunciations and added letters at the end of words ex: “z” “s”) I dont talk like that in public at least not loud enough for anyone to hear.
I can’t say that i can ever stop my twin talk but i don’t care what anybody thinks of it. I am who i am, cant help it.
Also, since we are on a twins site, do you ever notice that twins seem to like eachother more than their other siblings? I just wanted to know if i am the only one that feels that way. I don’t mean to sound b****y but it is true.
Thanks! -Raelynn
Comment by Rae — September 5, 2010 @ 3:46 pm
My sister and I are only one minute apart. Growing up she and I had our own language. My mother had thought nothing of it. Well, naturally, we were both placed in the same classes, begining in pre-school. When we reached 2nd grade, the teachers and school personel had brought some concerns to my mothers attention. They wanted to separate us, mainly because they felt it to be a challenge to try to cipher our “language”. Well, being apart from my sister over the course of 8 hours a day for a period of 4 years, she and I just stopped talking in our own little language. I feel that it took something great, something powerful away from us. Some of that connection that we had, sadly was now gone.
Comment by Dominica — September 9, 2010 @ 1:04 pm
I’m a mother of 2year old fraternal twins (Francisco and Xavier). The only times that i’ve seen them talk or even facial or hand gestures that probably are there own language is when they are not aware that i’m looking at them or they are so occupied in what they are doing they forget i’m there. It’s very interesting in seeing them understand each other perfectly and laughing of something no one else knows about. Infront of people they talk cleared with words. It’s a great reward to see them connect and feel they have something magical.
Comment by karla — September 13, 2010 @ 4:41 am
I am the mother of identical twin boys who were born in 1969. My children were not premature (weighed 7 lbs each), nor were they brain-damaged. They simply began to speak their own language to each other (and to me) very early. By the time they were 2 1/2, they did not speak a word of English, only their own language (which I understood and responded to). I figured that the only way I could force them to speak English was to put them in a daycare setting where they would be forced to communicate in English in order to make their needs known. It worked. After being in daycare for about 6 mos. (while I was working as a nurse) they began to speak perfectly acceptable English for 3-yr-olds. In later years, when the boys were IQ tested, they were well above normal intelligence. Today, they are 41, married, college graduates, and each of them has two children. I think it is wrong to assume that simply because twins speak their own language that they are less than normal. My experience indicates that twins who are well socialized early in their development will give up twin speech and communicate normally with others.
Comment by Sandra Kennedy — September 15, 2010 @ 8:37 pm
I’m a 25 year old twin and my other half and I do have a secret language.
We can look at each other and know what the other one is thinking and trying to say,
whenever we have outing plans we always dress alike(even in colour),the more we try to not be alike,the more we are, even our names are alike,
we live in different places in our own homes.how would the one know what the other is thinking if not for our telepathy?
I always pack an extra outfit in case we dress alike which happens every time. We even dress our kids alike!
Our kids look like trippelets,people tend to think they have one mom!
I love being part of someone and when people ask us the obvious(we are identical)question if we’re twins, we simply respond by saying;
No-we are identical strangers! (Verity and Verine’)
Comment by Verity Engel — September 27, 2010 @ 5:44 am
Our twins seem to say a few words that only they understand, however I agree with most of the comments that a lot of it is non-verbal. Gestures and signals seem to be a big part of their understood communication, but we are always wondering how much of it is only because they are the same age. We are lucky in that we have been able to raise all of our children at home, so we don’t have the experience of day care with similarly aged children to make the comparison. We’d rather keep thinking they are deeply connected anyway…
Comment by Matt — November 2, 2010 @ 8:53 am
Yes, absolutely! My 2 year old twin boys have names for each other and talk together in their own language which they each understand. When I catch them with their heads together talking or calling each other and ask them, they laugh at me and won’t tell me. It’s their secret. Anyone who says twins don’t share a language clearly hasn’t spent much time with twins:) Especially when they’re up to no good!
Comment by Millie — November 14, 2010 @ 6:13 pm
I have identical twin girls that were mono-amniotic/mono-chorionic(MoMo), which means that they had skin to skin contact in the womb and they will be 2 in December. They were 7 weeks early and both almost 6LBS each. The younger one says more words than the older(only a minute apart)and she speaks clearer. She also walks a lot better too and is smaller. I believe they have their own language. They can be sitting there all quiet and look at each other and laugh, their 4yr old brother can’t understand them either. And they babble a lot to each other, especially before bed. They also feel each others pain. One day a few weeks ago Aubrey(the younger one)fell and bit through her bottom lip, later that night I was putting them to bed and noticed a dark red mark right in the same place on Emmalee’s chin as where Aubrey had bit herself. They do however have different personalities. Emmalee is more dramatic and Aubrey is more mellow. Other than a slight weight difference they are 100% identical in looks but I don’t dress them identical! Raising twins is so fun but so different than just one.
Comment by Ashley — November 22, 2010 @ 1:10 am
My mother and her identical twin, both now dead, did not have speacial language, but they could carry on a conversation by both talking at the same time. They could actually hear and understand each other while talking themselves, so didn’t have to take turns.
Comment by thecla geraghty — November 22, 2010 @ 5:53 am
The myth of twin language , is that it is a myth. I am a twin. My twin and I shared a complex language as young children and continue to use several words and phrases in situations that we wish to communicate without easedropping or commentary from others. Ie. When we are talking in a resteraunt or in the presence of our children. Sorry if the scientists missed that part of their childhood…we did not! Lol. No we were not isolated , we had a mutual best friend that we spent hours with.
Comment by kelybell — November 28, 2010 @ 6:02 pm
9. We’re a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site offered us with valuable information to work on. You’ve done an impressive job and our entire community will be grateful to you.
Comment by Maryland — February 5, 2011 @ 5:43 am
HAHA! My twin girls Stacey and Macey are IDENTICAL ! They say a lot at the same time and look identical, they also have a ton of the same clothes! Even I get the girls mixed up a majority of the time!
Comment by Jana Neyland — February 18, 2011 @ 10:10 pm
Good Morning,
I work at the BBC in London and we are looking for twins who can still speak their own language for a new TV show.
I know a lot of twins have this when they are younger but the twins we are looking for will need to be over 18. If anyone here knows of a pair of twins that are still able to speak their own language at an older age then please get in touch.
Paul.Braund@bbc.co.uk
Many thanks,
Paul
Comment by Paul Braund — February 28, 2011 @ 6:56 am
hi i have a twin sister name tyler mines is taylor we are 18 years old and westill have our secret language that we only know about. its cool that nobody else knoe what were talking about except my older brother. he understands everything
Comment by taylor — March 31, 2011 @ 10:56 am
I have 7 year old identical twin boys and they had a language that they spoke between them when they were younger. However, I was very vocal with them and never used baby words but talked to them about everything as we did household chores, errands, or played. Whatever we did, I spoke to them describing to them what I was doing or what was around us. They speak very well today and have knowledge of many more vocabulary words than is usual for their age. They started speaking at what was appropriate for their age levels. They definitely had their own language between them and they both seemed to undertand each other similar to the twins in the video. Their teachers also say they have great auditory skills for their age (above age level), with great comprehension when spoken to.
Comment by Lilly — March 31, 2011 @ 3:19 pm
I am an identical twin. I have some memories of when I was little and my twin and I would play with dolls and speak in some odd language, and we had no trouble doing that before…but as we grew older and learned more English, we had to stop each other and ask what they were saying. I don’t know for sure if we had our own language, but we sure talked to each other in some type of way that we could understand each other and form strategies (like getting to the first floor of our apartment building when we lived on the top floor)
Comment by Mary — March 31, 2011 @ 9:03 pm
I am a twin recently turned 18 and me and my brother could relate to this. Me and my brother don’t really have a language but we can say something completey irrelevent to what we mean and understand what one of is is saying.
Comment by austen — May 13, 2011 @ 10:41 pm
My kids are of 17 months old and they started talking each other a lot..Their language is very different. I and my wife enjoys watching that
Comment by Vishal — September 15, 2011 @ 11:28 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL9h_3HdfA4&feature=autoshare
Comment by Vishal — September 15, 2011 @ 11:29 pm
I have twin niece who still speak twin talk. They have been doing it since they were babie and now dont even realize that they do it. They will be in a group with a bunch of friends but when they look at each other, these two girls start speaking a language that nobody understands but them.
Comment by sb — September 16, 2011 @ 12:07 pm
identical twin girls they are 4 years &2 months they are in reception class now ,i observe them doing lot of the same things for example when i went shoping with them they like the same dress or the same toys or shoes & in school as well they playing with the same friends but iam still not sure if they are 100% identical ,after all i feel lucky & iam so happy with them.
Comment by sara — October 29, 2011 @ 6:00 pm
I have two friends that are twins and I noticed that when one gets hurt the other seens to automatically know and mutter to her when helping. The youngest of the two seems to mutter gibberish aimlessly to the other when she’s not paying attention. Saying things like “Atta” for thank you or “sata” as if for ‘are you okay’.
Comment by Jo — October 30, 2011 @ 5:02 pm
My identical twin and I are now 61 years old. We DO have a language that others cannot understand that was developed at a very young age…although my grand daughters are learning it!!! They love “twin talk!”
Comment by Judy — November 11, 2011 @ 10:58 pm
My identical twin sister and I did speak in “twinnese” as my parents called it when we were kids. We spoke it so often that our parents sent us to a school to teach us to get us to speak English instead of “twinnese”. Course now I only remember two words “Thika” which was pillow that my mom told me and “Didi” which was our word when referring to each other
Comment by Sandy — January 16, 2012 @ 3:51 am
My twin boys are 3 years old and they make up words and for some reason they understand each other. The newest word is “sheegee” and as soon as they say that they start to race. They will run touch the wall and then return from where they started. I think it’s pretty neat and and interesting just to see them interact with each other.
Comment by Rosa — March 23, 2012 @ 10:42 pm
I am a 45 yr old identical twin. Yes, I remember being a young age in a high-chair talking with my twin Julie, and mom said to our sitter, “I think they know what they are saying to each other.” This is and odd memory for me but we still talk about it. I told mom, yes, we did know and we understood you too. !!!!!
Comment by Jane Daoust — April 2, 2012 @ 8:17 am
I am a twin and my sister found this website to find more info. About us! When she saw the twin language part she told me to write a comment about it. So here I go. When we were little we talked in 1 language an that was our own. It wasn’t English at least that’s what I was told. I only remember a bit. But I knew it was fun to have our own language. And it was also he’d bc nO body understood us and we were confused about that… We thought we were talking about that but really only we understood each other. I remember it took us years to talk normal. Till like 3grade that we could talk with clear speech. So yeah ur twins will be fine as lOng as you keep workin with them. But remember just to let ur twins have fun with it. Twins share a special bond and let me just say…it’s awesome;)
Comment by Green — April 16, 2012 @ 3:49 pm
Hi, I have not identical twins boys. They turned 3 this month, and don’t speak yet. They can say some words, like apple, ball, bubbles, mama, papa and that’s it. Of course like all twins they have their own language. Maybe because in the house they expose to two completely different languages – mother is russian, father is english. They understand russian, but say words in english. Maybe somebody had the same problem, if yes, how did you come over it.
Comment by Natalia — June 21, 2012 @ 10:23 am
I am a twin too – 47 (identical) and one of my earliest memories is of my sister Julie and I sitting side by side in our double wide stroller going down the grocery aisle with mom. I remember hearing people talk and not knowing what they were saying. I, through mental telepathy I assume, communicated to my sister, “hey, let’s make up our own language and let them know we can talk too” and so we went back and forth and seemed to understand each other. I have always thought it is somehow related to baby talk and in fact, babies usually respond when I resort back to that language.
Comment by Jeanne Nielson — July 18, 2012 @ 3:13 pm
I have twin boys of 2 and half and they have just started what i believe to be a twin language.They can both speak very well and have done since around 1year old.they speak very clearly and engage in conversation with adults and children alike.but recently they have began communicating with one another in a talk which nobody can understand exept them.it is a lovely melodic speak,lilting up and down,ending in open ended questions to which the other answers, they laugh and seem to disagree etc. when i have interupted and tried to work out what they are discussing, they start speaking normally again to me and each other, tel me about what they were discussing and when i leave them to it, start up with the twin chatter again!its an amazing thing to hear, and i have no doubts about speech delay or anything for now or the future,they both speak lovely english and can sign quite a bit too(which they also use with eachother)very cute and makes me very proud if not a bit jealous!
Comment by kat keane — July 21, 2012 @ 3:34 pm
I am 52 year old identical twin. My sister and I shared our own private language when toddlers. But I also remember knowing what she was saying without any words. I remember specific incident in cribs one night.
Comment by sheryl — December 26, 2012 @ 1:15 am
I have twin 2.5 yr old girls. They have spoken in their own language since they were able to talk. Interestingly enough, the words they chose, were nonsense words that a slightly older child was using at the time. So at 1, they were saying “sickle sickle dado dado dikkadikka” to each other. They picked these terms up from a 2.5 yr old friend of theirs who called a stroller a “dado” an iphone a “dikkadikka” and a tricycle a “sickle”. My girls were very pleased to “talk” to eachother their “big girl”. It has resulted in some difficulties with them being behind in language skills but they are coming along slowly as they realize that while it might not be as fun to talk to mommy, sometimes you have to in order to get what you want!
Comment by April — March 26, 2013 @ 4:17 pm
Hi, I am a 14 year old male identical twin. My twin and I had words for things that we both used like atta for example which meant light. However when we were 7 or 8 years old, we started speaking in Pig Latin. It is great because we can talk to each other in front of everybody, and they have no clue what we are saying. (We speak it really fast).
Comment by G.R. — June 4, 2013 @ 10:43 pm
Hi, I am a 14 year old male identical twin. My twin and I had words for things that we both used like atta for example which meant light. However when we were 7 or 8 years old, we started speaking in Pig Latin. It is great because we can talk to each other in front of everybody, and they have no clue what we are saying. (We speak it really fast).We also finish each other sentences. The coolest thing is my brother might have a song in his head, and then I will start singing it in the exact same spot! (Or vice-versa).
Comment by G.R. — June 5, 2013 @ 8:53 am