Poto and Cabengo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Poto and Cabengo were a pair of identical twin girls (real names Grace and Virginia Kennedy, respectively), who used a secret language up to the age of about 8. Poto and Cabengo is also the name of a documentary film about the girls made by Jean-Pierre Gorin and released in 1979.
They were apparently of normal intelligence; they developed their own communication because they had little exposure to spoken language in their early years.
Their birth was normal, and they were able to lift their heads and make eye contact with their parents within hours after birth. Doctors at the time referred to this behavior as related to a seizure disorder and speculated that both girls would become mentally retarded as a result. Misunderstanding speculation for diagnosis, the girls' parents ceased to pay more attention to them than necessary, the father stating "A man in his position, he knows what he's talking about."
Both parents were employed (although later characterized by the 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. They had no contact with other children, seldom played outdoors, and were not sent to school.
Their father later stated in interviews that he realized the girls had invented a language of their own, but since their use of English remained extremely rudimentary, he had decided that they were in fact retarded 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, and the caseworker advised him to put the girls in speech therapy. At Children's Hospital of San Diego, speech therapist Alexa Kratze quickly discovered that Virginia and Grace, far from being retarded, had at least normal intelligence, and had invented a complex idioglossia.
Their language was spoken extremely quickly and had a staccato rhythm. These characteristics transferred themselves to the girls' English, which they began to speak following speech therapy. Linguistic analysis of their language revealed that it was a mixture of English and German (their mother and grandmother were German-born), with some neologisms and several idiosyncratic grammatical features.
The story of the "twins who made their own language" made the national newspapers in 1978 and was included in an edition of the People's Almanac. Many speech and hearing experts, as well as psychiatrists, offered speculation as to why the girls had not picked up English, as most idioglossic twins do as they go along whether or not they retain their personal language. 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. These factors contributed to the girls' developmental disability, even if they had been born with normal intelligence.
Once it was established that the girls could be educated, their father apparently forbade them to speak their personal language. He was quoted in People 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 quickly stepped in to chide them for "lying." They were mainstreamed and placed in separate classes in elementary school. However, they were still affected by their family's emotional neglect. A follow-up revealed that Virginia works on an assembly line in a supervised job training center; Grace mops floors at a fast-food restaurant.
The film was mis-cited as "Poto and Cabenga" in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, and quite a few other citations seem to be drawn entirely from that reference.
"Poto and Cabengo" is also the name of a folk-rock band.
[edit] Sample speech extract
- GRACE: Cabengo, padem manibadu peeta.
- VIRGINIA: Doan nee bada tengkmatt, Poto.
