Couples’ invented languages may be weird, but it turns out they aren’t really that unusual
Photo: J.V. Aranda A few months into our relationship, my boyfriend and I started adding funny-sounding syllables to the beginnings of words. Hug became “higgle hug,” bed became “bibble bed,” dog became “diggle dog,” and so on, following this unspoken “iggle/ibble” rule. We once affectionately called our Airbnb host “Giggle Gary.”
Sometimes, couples speak in plain old baby talk. Words that fall into this category tend to be full of rhymes or repeated syllables, slowly spoken, and high-pitched, says Dean Falk, professor of anthropology at Florida State University and author of Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language. They might include pet names like “Babes” or “Jolly-Wolly.” Alyssa Carroll, a 30-year-old communications consultant in L.A.
Regardless of the form they take, these languages help build intimacy in relationships. It seems people intuitively understand this: When a friend of mine met my partner, she told me he seemed like a keeper, in part because of our shared language. “Couples create ‘rituals of connection’ to keep their ‘culture of two’ strong, private language being one type of those rituals,” says Carol Bruess, director of family studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
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