Identical twins Matthew and Michael Youlden can speak 26 languages – not a single one of which can be mentioned in the history of etymology.
Inspired by the multicultural landscape of his hometown Manchester in the UK, the multilingual who now runs his own language learning company became interested in foreign language study from an early age.
However, their first language was their own: Umeri.
Identical twin brothers, “Umari has never been limited by the language he uses to keep things private.” told the BBC In a joint message. “It certainly has great sentimental value to us, as it reflects the deep bond we share between us as identical twins.”
While the Youldens don’t remember a time before Umeri, they remember their confused parents as preschoolers when the boys would tell jokes in conversation.
Spanish was his third language, learned at the age of eight during family holidays, followed by Italian and Scandinavian languages – while studying and developing the grammatical structure for his home language.
According to the BBC, an estimated 30-50% of twins form a unique form of communication, known as cryptophasia.
While deepening the relationship between twins, such exclusivity can be isolating.
“Twins have this shared language, at some point they stop using it, as if they’re embarrassed by it,” Matthews told the BBC. When she and Michael gathered in Umeri, their friends and family shrugged: “They’re stopping talking language again.”
Nancy Segal, director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, warns parents of twins who exhibit private speech patterns that these habits can have negative social effects. “One problem with twins is that parents leave them alone because they entertain each other, but then they don’t have adult language models,” she said.
Such was the case for Barbadian twins June and Jennifer Gibbons, who grew up in Wales in the 1970s. The sisters were bullied from a young age due to a shared speech impediment and as a result became so antisocial that they vowed to speak only to each other.
By the age of 19, his speech was incomprehensible. The troubled sisters took up a life of crime before being caught and sent to a high-security psychiatric facility in Broadmoor, England.
“We were frustrated, we were trapped in our twin brotherhood and trapped in that language, we tried everything we could to separate ourselves,” June said in June 2023. bbc podcast About his life.
According to Karen Thorpe, who studies language development in twins at the University of Queensland’s Brain Institute, there are few reliable case studies on twin-speaking because most twins forget their particular language. However, many will retain special nicknames and non-verbal cues that only the twins can translate. “They may not have what we would call a distinct language, but they do have something that is quite special,” he said.
Sehgal agrees. In general, he told the BBC, “Twins don’t invent new languages, they just produce unusual forms of the languages they come in contact with. Even though it is beyond understanding, they still direct it toward other people.”
While Michael and Matthew do not intend to abandon their language, they have continued to develop and improve Umri for themselves.
“It’s one of those things that unfortunately has an expiration date.”
