Re: Twin speak

Howdy all, I am new to the list, but in response to the twin speak I have a
very good friend. We are so close we have our own words (mostly inside
jokes, but nonetheless they are only known to us) and we speak in half
thoughts, etc... and rarely is there a miscommunication. We are not any way
related, and physically total opposites but we get along incredibly well. Go
figure.

Peace
Patrick


----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: Twin speak


> On Mon, Oct 09, 2000 at 03:47:51PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> [snip]
> > I wish I knew, too.  :-)  There was a phase during which my younger
> > sister (by 2.5 years) was speaking some mixture of Korean and English
and
> > I was the only one who could consistently understand her, though I was
> > Korean-ing and English-ing at her myself.  I was about 8 at the time,
> > though, so I don't recall details, and we're certainly not twins (though
> > we're very close, and people listening in on certain of our
conversations
> > have no clue what's going on, what with all the idiosyncratic
non-obvious
> > terminology like "lemonade," "Blueflame principle," "elthki," etc.).
> [snip]
>
> I observed this in two of my cousins, who has taken our local Malaysian
> Hokkien-English-Malay pidgin to extremes by incorporating words, phrases,
> and even sound effects from video games. Although I can still understand
> them if I listened hard enough, another older cousin of mine has no idea
> what they're talking about 90% of the time. I also vaguely recall having a
> specialized terminology that I use with my father, that nobody else
> understands.
>
> My theory is that specialization causes two close people to develop a
> lingo "optimized" for communication with minimal fluff; this lingo could
> include things we would normally consider as extra-lingual such as sound
> effects imitations, etc., and would drop out unnecessary grammatical
> baggage. Given enough time, this could diverge enough from its source
> language(s) that it might start appearing like another language
> altogether.
>
> On a related note, one of those two cousins I mentioned used to speak an
> odd form of Hokkien to his brother that their parents could not
> understand. There was even a point when *only* his brother understood what
> he was saying!
>
>
> T

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