I Am a Strange Loop

In Twinwirld, there is an unspoken and obvious understanding that the basic units are pairsons, not left or right halves, and that even though each dividual consists of two physically separate and distinguishable halves, the bond between those halves is so tight that that the physical separateness doesn’t much matter. That everytwo is made of a left and right half is just a familiar fact about being alive, taken for granted like the fact that every half has two hands, and every hand has five fingers. Things have parts, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have integrity as wholes!

The left and right halves of a pairson are sometimes physically apart from each other, though generally only for very brief periods. For instance, one half of twem might make a quick hop to the grocery store to get something that twey forgot to purchase, while the other half is cooking tweir dinner. Or if twey’re snowboarding down a hill, twey might split apart to go around opposite sides of a twee. But most of the time the two halves prefer to stay close to each other. And although the two halves do have conversations together, most thoughts are so easily anticipated that very few words are usually needed, even to get across rather complex ideas.

Is One or Two Letters of the Alphabet?

We now come to the tricky matter of pairsonal pronouns in Twinwirld. To start off, they have something like our familiar pronoun “I” for an isolated half, but it is written with a small “i”. This is because “i”, much like the suffixes “l” and “r”, is a very rare term used only when extreme pedantic clarity is called for. Far more common than “i” is the pronoun that either half of a pairson uses in order to refer to the whole pairson. I am not speaking of the pronoun “we”, because that word reaches out beyond the pairson who is speaking, and includes other pairsons. Thus “we” might mean, for instance, “our whole school” or “everytwo at last night’s dinner party”. Instead, there is a special variant of “we” — “Twe” (always spelled with a capital “T”) — which denotes just that pairson of which the speaker is the left or right half. And of course there is an analogous pronoun, “” (which, although it looks as though it should be pronounced “double-you”, is actually pronounced “tyou”, like the “Tue” in a British “Tuesday”), used for addressing exactly one other pairson. Thus, for example, back when they were first getting to know each other, Greg (that is, either Greg’l or Greg’r — I don’t know which half of twem) once said very timidly to Karen (on whom twey had a crush), “Tonight after dinner, Twe are going to the movies; would like to join twus, Karen?”

The pronoun “you” also exists in Twinwirld, but it is plural only, which means that it is never used for addressing just one other dividual — it always denotes a group. “Do you know how to ski?” might be asked of an entire family, but never of just one twild or one pairent. (The way to ask that would be, of course, “Do know how to ski?”) Analogously, “they” never denotes just one dividual. “Both of them came to our wedding” is a statement about a duo of pairsons (that is to say, four halves — or four “persons”, in the quaint terminology of those hailing from our world). As for a third-pairson singular pronoun, there is one — “twey” — and it is genderless. Thus “Did twey go to the concert last night?” could be a question about either Karen or Greg (but not about both together, as that would require “they”), and “Have twey had the measles?” could be asked about either Lucas or Natalie, but of course not about both.

Pairsonal Identity in Twinwirld

A young pairson in Twinwirld grows up with a natural sense of being just one unit, even though twey consist of two disconnected parts. “Every dividual is indivisible”, runs an ancient Twinwirld saying. All sorts of conventions in Twinwirld systematically reinforce and lock in this feeling of unity and indivisibility. For instance, only one grade is earned for work that do in school. It may be that one half of is a bit weaker than the other half is in, say, math or drawing, but that doesn’t affect collective self-image; what counts is the team’s joint performance. When a twild learns to play a musical instrument, both halves have their own instrument, practice the same pieces, and do so simultaneously. A bit later in life, when ’re in college, read novels written by pairsons, go to exhibits of paintings painted by pairsons, and study theorems proven by pairsons. In a word, credit and blame, glory and shame, neglect and fame are always doled out to pairsons, never to mere halves of pairsons.