Eeeevil

Evil twins don't exist. Sure, there can be twinships where one is a better person or whatever. But there is no cosmic rule that in each pair of twins, there is an angel and a devil. You would be surprised how often we come across people who truly believe this. "Oh, come on," they say. "One of you *has* to be the bad twin." I would sometimes like to respond "Oh, well, then you *have* to be an idiot."

I don't, however. Wouldn't want them walking away, thinking they were right all along and this one is definitely the evil one, now would we?

Maybe they watched Sabrina the Teenage Witch episodes with Sabrina's evil twin (from an alternate universe) Katrina. Maybe they played Legend of Zelda and saw Link's evil twin Dark Link. Maybe they are Trekkies who saw Star Trek Nemesis, and since they watched a movie with Data and his evil twin B-4, they are now twin experts. I could go on and on with examples.

I am not even going to go into soap operas' use of the evil twin. It's just not a good soap if someone's not coming back to life after being offed by their evil twin, right? Katharine Chu wrote a paper, up on MIT's OpenCourseWare, about the decline of the soap opera. She's got a whole paragraph on the evil twin plot twist.

To be fair, a lot of "evil twins" in the media are actually evil, or misunderstood, doppelgangers, not identical twins. But people don't always... oh, alright, NEVER pick up on that subtlety.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some evil homework to do.

Cheers,
Alison

Twin Language

No, we do not have our (original) twin language anymore. We do have a sign language deal we made up, part ASL, part nonsense. But that is not a true idioglossia or cryptophasia.

"Idioglossia" is a scientific term for twin language. "Idio" comes from "idiosyncratic," and "glossia" means "of the tongue." "Cryptophasia" is another term for twin language, "crypto" means "secret" and "phasia" comes from "aphasia," a speech disorder.

Words we still remember from our language (because our family thought they were hilarious and therefore still occasionally uses them):
Fogee, Fogi, Foji: pronounced "Foh-jee," Baby A came up with that one for our older sister
Tack-tack: cracker
Fy-fy: fry

Our baby and toddler years were spent in Hawaii, so we picked up on some Hawaiian Pidgin as well. That had a hand in our pronunciation of things and our grammar. Our family still uses "all pao" sometimes for "all done, finished." Back then, we dropped the R or various other letters off of the ends of words. Apparently, one time when I got a plant piece in my foot, I went to my dad and said "I got one stickah in one foo." "One" is more commonly used in Pidgin than "an" or "a."

Our idioglossia was influenced by both English and Pidgin. The reason for an idioglossia between any siblings that are close in age is due to the natural mimicking and practicing of speech. When babies are together and practice talking, their mistakes get incorporated into their speech. It can turn into something that sounds like an entirely separate language.

Cheers,
Alison

School is Occasionally Useful

I am taking an intro to public speaking class. Because I figured it wouldn't be too bad. And because it filled a requirement for both of my majors. I'm nothing if not practical.

Our first big speech had to be an informative speech. And guess what I informed about? Twins. So out of character for me, I know.

So now I have some more research done about things I have yet to blog about. Idioglossia! Evil twins in the media (with examples)! Identical twinning and IVF! More science!

Stay tuned.

Cheers,
Alison