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Poto and Cabengo (names given, respectively, byGrace and Virginia Kennedy to themselves) are Americanidentical twins who used aninvented language (Cryptophasia) until the age of about eight.
The girls were apparently of normal intelligence. They developed their own communication as they had little exposure tospoken language in their early years. Poto and Cabengo were the names they called each other.[1]
Poto and Cabengo is also the name of a documentary film about the girls made byJean-Pierre Gorin and released in 1980.
Grace and Virginia Kennedy were born in 1970 inColumbus, Georgia.[2] Their birth was normal, and they were able to lift their heads and make eye contact with their parents within hours after birth, but both soon suffered apparent seizures.[3] Their father maintained that a surgeon told him the girls might experiencedevelopmental disabilities. Apparently misunderstanding speculation fordiagnosis, the girls' parents ceased to pay more attention to them than necessary.[citation needed]
Both parents were employed (although later characterized byThe San Diego Tribune as living on "food stamps and welfare") and spent many hours away from home. The girls were left in the care of a grandmother who met their physical needs but did not play or interact with them. The grandmother spoke only German, while the parents spoke English.[1] They had no contact with other children, seldom played outdoors, and were not sent to school.[4]
Their father later stated in interviews that he realized the girls had invented a language of their own, but, since their use ofEnglish remained extremely rudimentary, he had decided that they were, as the doctor suggested, developmentally challenged and that it would do no good to send them to school. When he lost his job, he told a caseworker at the unemployment office about his family; the caseworker advised him to put the girls inspeech therapy.[2] At theChildren's Hospital of San Diego, inCalifornia, speech therapists Ann Koeneke and Alexa Kratze discovered that Virginia and Grace had invented a complexidioglossia.[5]
The twins' language was characterized by an extremely fast tempo and astaccato rhythm, traits the girls transferred to their spokenEnglish following speech therapy. Linguistic analysis revealed that their language was a mixture of English andGerman (their mother and grandmother wereGerman born) with someneologisms and several idiosyncratic grammatical features.[2]
The story of the "twins who made their own language" made the national newspapers in 1978 and was included in an edition of thePeople's Almanac. Many speech and hearing experts andpsychiatrists offered speculation as to why, in contrast to most idioglossic twins, the girls had failed to pick up English.[citation needed] Alexa Kratze pointed out that the girls had had very little contact with anyone outside their family and that contact within the family had been minimal at best, factors that contributed to the girls'developmental disability.[citation needed]
Once it was established that the girls could be educated, their father apparently forbade them to speak their personal language. He was quoted inTime magazine as saying: "They don't want to be associated as dummies. You live in a society, you got to speak the language." Asked if they remembered their language, the girls confirmed that they did, but their father gently chided them for "lying."[6] Despite beingmainstreamed and placed in separate classes, the girls remained affected by their family's emotional neglect. A follow-up as they approached the age of 30 revealed that Virginia worked on anassembly line in a supervised job training center, while Grace mopped floors at the fast-food restaurantMcDonald's.[7]
