When you were a child...

[Domino]

Aelan -- my twin and I had "secret twin speak" too. Drove my mother nuts.

 

[white]

Aelan -- my twin and I had "secret twin speak" too. Drove my mother nuts.

We still do (drive the parentals nuts and speak twinspeak). We'll rattle off and only close friends can understand as we'd taught it to them, but they're not as fluent as us in it speaking though.

Purple,

 

[Domino]

Purple,

Das flibbelty-cheep, Sombrero dew?

 

[white]

Das flibbelty-cheep, Sombrero dew?

yip dahleeng, ay larb yewe teu.

 

[Domino]

yip dahleeng, ay larb yewe teu.

Aaahh. Weebuth.

 

[MerkW]

*cracks knuckles*

Ok. Time to whip out some Ti. A little cryptoanalysis here, a little there, and... voila! The secret language shall be decoded.

 

[Domino]

No, no, Dr. Strangelove. You mustn't!

 

[white]

*cracks knuckles*

Ok. Time to whip out some Ti. A little cryptoanalysis here, a little there, and... voila! The secret language shall be decoded.

Go for it. I'll reward you with a huge dose of adorable pinky smileys with flowers in hand.

Question on the type: It changes as we grow older? So would you see that as becoming more true to type, or a realisation that some behaviours/attitudes do not fit into our environment, and we adapt. i.e. is it nature or nurture that reverts/evolves us into adulthood?

 

[prplchknz]

Das flibbelty-cheep, Sombrero dew?

that's really sweet, *something* do? (I'm sorry on this one I keep picturing a mexican drinking a mountain dew)

yip dahleeng, ay larb yewe teu.

Yes darling, I love you too

Aaahh. Weebuth.

????

Am I right?


ooh I loved foreign languages growing up mostly just hearing them, still do. I love listening to a language I know nothing of and seeing If I can figure out something.

 

[Usehername]

1. Thanks for the info re: the katydids


2. Twinspeak: that is something I definitely want to observe. It seems so fascinating. My psycholinguistics class touched on stuff related to this this semester.
I think it originates b/c babies babble all phonemes from every language around the world (see infant head turning experiment), and when you get older as you don't hear the phonemes, you lose the physical ability to hear the difference. (Which is why young kids can pick up a 2nd language fluently, but once you are out of the sensitive period, you will always be tagged as a non-native speaker.)
So the babies the same age living with each other babble, and then they try to communicate, and they reinforce each other's babbling, and a new language is formed. And it can actually be a grammatically correct language b/c kids create grammar, it's a biologically rooted instinct (research pidgins and creoles/note how all kids overregularlize (e.g. "we wented to the store")).

It's cool how you guys kept it

Does anyone know of any twinspeak that occurred between fraternal twins? Do you think having the same genes makes you more likely to attempt to communicate in the same manner, so twinspeak will be more quickly understood and therefore more deeply developed?

 

[white]

On twins and the MBTI and childhood, Merkw.

If genetically identical twins are raised in the same environment, would you expect their MBTI to be identical?

I'm asking this as I realised me and mine are one letter apart, same with Pink and hers.

So back to the earlier point of nature vs nurture. If a child's type is fixed pretty much from childhood (the way Jennifer can type her children from young), that seems to be a case of nature then?

How then genetically identical twins with different MBTIs?

 

[arcticangel02]

Eternity makes me freak out. I don't think about it.

Me too. *shudder*


Anyway, back on the topic, I seemed very much introverted as a child... always dreaming off in my own little world. I remember very little of the details of school and stuff. But around 17/18 years of age, I 'grew up' rather quickly, got over a lot of the shyness I'd had, and since then I've been slowly but surely becoming more E. Or more obviously so.

What's interesting is that my mother says that I taught her the difference between being quiet and being shy... previously she had always believed that the quiet ones were just shy. But I seemed to be the opposite. Quiet but not shy. Maybe that's just the moderate E manifesting itself despite the shyness and awkwardness of youth. I was certainly not quiet or shy around my family.

I think I was always very N... very absent and dreamy and I had a reputation through school as the 'smart' girl, despite the fact my grades weren't always top of the class. I guess I just exuded the quiet intelligence thing.... LOL. I don't so much anymore.

I think I have always had quite strong feeling. I've always been terribly sensitive and although my moods don't swing dramatically or anything, I cry very easily. There was a time when I first came across MBTI when I thought I might be T (because I was smart, so of course I'd be a logical, rational sort of person.. ), but no, I think that was fairly clear.

And P... yeah, I've never been very organised or punctual or any of that. I was always terribly pathetic at keeping my diary and homework organised. And I have always been fantastic at procrastination.


I suppose I did show flashes of extroversion as a child... like I have a stubborn streak, and as a toddler I would throw a tantrum if I didn't get my blue cup! I didn't want the red one!!

There was a time at a restaurant that I think my parents were talking about the people in a booth behind us. For whatever reason. So I stood up (I was just tall enough to see over the edge of the back of the seats) and looked over and said 'Hello people!' before sitting back down.

 

[bai_lin83]

My mom always said I had a happy childhood. She said I smiled and laughed a lot. I got along with kids and adults pretty well.

Both my parents said I started to read when I was 2 years old... I preferred watching commercials than the actual shows on tv...

Growing up, it wasn't hard for me to make friends. I remember always taking things apart and putting them back on. One of my fondest memories is rummaging thru my dad's tool cabinet. I loved tinkering with wires, electronics, plumbing stuff, and more STUFF. I would be making stuff all the time.

In class, I enjoyed playing mental games.. My friends and I would pass a piece of paper back and forth and play the "WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF" game.

My mom told me that one of my teachers approached her and told her that she was surprised to realize that while I was quiet in class, outside of it I was the total opposite.

I remember teachers isolating me from the rest of the class when taking tests. WEIRD. Profs still do that to me to this day... (I'm in uni now.)

I think I was more of an extrovert when I was younger but I enjoyed lots of time alone, too.

I've always loved debates and discussions. My close friends and I enjoyed lots of it when we were kids...and we still debate whenever we get together.

I used to be really stubborn. I could relate with arcticangel02.. I remember my mom giving me a pair of shoes I didn't want... and I was like.. If I don't get the shoes I want, forget it.

So I guess, I used to be an ENTP kid.

 

[Totenkindly]

I think it originates b/c babies babble all phonemes from every language around the world (see infant head turning experiment), and when you get older as you don't hear the phonemes, you lose the physical ability to hear the difference. (Which is why young kids can pick up a 2nd language fluently, but once you are out of the sensitive period, you will always be tagged as a non-native speaker.)

I know this is the norm. (Language is fascinating that way -- and incidentally I think demands that we view human beings as social creatures rather than completely independent, since we need language to articulate our thoughts and even give us tools to think, and we only learn language by being "triggered" by other human beings).

Do you know the window in years?

Our daughter was four when we adopted her, and I thought that was outside the window... but she speaks English as fluently as if she were born here. No one knows she wasn't a baby when she came here. Weird.

 

[INTJMom]

I know this is the norm. (Language is fascinating that way -- and incidentally I think demands that we view human beings as social creatures rather than completely independent, since we need language to articulate our thoughts and even give us tools to think, and we only learn language by being "triggered" by other human beings).

Do you know the window in years?

Our daughter was four when we adopted her, and I thought that was outside the window... but she speaks English as fluently as if she were born here. No one knows she wasn't a baby when she came here. Weird.

I spoke French until the age of four when I said my first English words after being babysat by an English-speaking family for a week. (I think I understood English a bit before then.) Once I entered kindergarten, I spoke English exclusively.

I find it hard to learn new languages now.

 

[Totenkindly]

I spoke French until the age of four when I said my first English words after being babysat by an English-speaking family for a week. (I think I understood English a bit before then.) Once I entered kindergarten, I spoke English exclusively.

Neat, I didn't know that! (a well kept secret?)

Where are you from, originally, and what nationality are your parents?

Do you still recall or speak any French?

 

[prplchknz]

My Modern History Teacher in highschool, was born in some South American country and when she was little could speak Spanish, but moved to the US when she was young and has since forgotten it. I don't know how fluent she was in Spanish as I believe her family was from the US orginally.

 

[Usehername]

I know this is the norm. (Language is fascinating that way -- and incidentally I think demands that we view human beings as social creatures rather than completely independent, since we need language to articulate our thoughts and even give us tools to think, and we only learn language by being "triggered" by other human beings).

Do you know the window in years?

Our daughter was four when we adopted her, and I thought that was outside the window... but she speaks English as fluently as if she were born here. No one knows she wasn't a baby when she came here. Weird.

Babies can't hear some phonemes once they start vocalizing their phonemes from their own language. (whenever they start talking, they start not being able to hear some phonemes.) However this is just the sensitive period (i.e. best time; can develop any phoneme sound they hear) ending. The critical period (i.e. if you don't learn it now you'll never learn it) is 6 or 7ish? I think?

 

[Usehername]

On twins and the MBTI and childhood, Merkw.

If genetically identical twins are raised in the same environment, would you expect their MBTI to be identical?

I'm asking this as I realised me and mine are one letter apart, same with Pink and hers.

So back to the earlier point of nature vs nurture. If a child's type is fixed pretty much from childhood (the way Jennifer can type her children from young), that seems to be a case of nature then?

How then genetically identical twins with different MBTIs?

But that's not accounting for how you were differently treated. People were looking for things to separately distinguish the two of you so they could figure out who's who. So one twin gets labeled as the "absent-minded" one and one twin gets labeled the "schedule-oriented one" and adults talk around and say "this is how you figure out who is who".

You may be in the same environment but there is no way that you were treated identically. There's still variables to be weeded out. You'd need identical twins reared apart to discover MBTI pure heritability, because having similar but not identical environments complicates things. They really aren't reared apart anymore in adoptions. You'd need to MBTI 40+ year olds.

 

[Totenkindly]

But that's not accounting for how you were differently treated. People were looking for things to separately distinguish the two of you so they could figure out who's who. So one twin gets labeled as the "absent-minded" one and one twin gets labeled the "schedule-oriented one" and adults talk around and say "this is how you figure out who is who".

Exactly. Because people need to distinguish in their own heads the two twins.

There really, unfortunately, is no way ethically to figure out some of the things we'd love to figure out.

(Then again, I'm reading "As Nature Made Him" right now, about the John/Joan case overseen by Dr. Money, which was a similar "perfect" experiment since John/Joan was an identical twin. Of course, in that situation, inborn gender concepts overrode completely the parents' and cultures' attempts to raise John as female. So, if personality is at least partially innate, it seems it could also be resistant to environmental influence as well?)