That's horrible. Why are the parents forcing their own languages, dialects, and beliefs on their children?

They should be able to decide on their own which language they want to learn.

Bizarrely, the first association I have watching this is with the Sims, in which games the Sim people (of all ages) speak in nonsense syllables. It's quite amusing, in any case.

: ] Hello! Love the site! Anyway... I have a twin sister and we used to communicate using a "ta ta ta" as the basis of our language. I'm sure they are speaking in this manner to mimic societally acceptable speech patterns, but due to the fact that identical twins share brain waves, I have to believe they know what they are talking about! Would you care to expand on this?
Here are some interesting thoughts! http://www.parentsconnect.com/questions/twins_have_own_language.jhtml
http://multiples.about.com/od/twintoddlers/a/twintalk.htm <-- This is more along the lines of what you are referring to!

So, I think this is a great example of a point where two children who are just beginning to acquire language are communicating entirely in suprasegmentals (parts of communication that do not have discrete semantic content).
I think what would be really interesting to see would be children raised in a Mandarin speaking household and note the difference in inflection. Where these children have adopted conversational intonation to their babbles (to the point where you could reasonably write things like "da da da da da? da da da DA!"), the intonation in Mandarin is part of the word itself, and you could expect that children in Beijing might do this with specific differences based on their language and culture.

Whoa.. is there anyway to delete my comment? My full name is there.
Also, it is slightly offensive that you choose to use the phrasing "psychic connection" when I am referring to brain waves, (which exist.. it's a fact). Now, whether identical twins share this, I'm not sure. I chose to comment so that I could share perspective and learn. I am not a credible source nor should I be scrutinized, but, rather, politely corrected or respectfully explained to. When I write a dissertation, I'll be sure to share all my statistics and data, but for now, I simply want to learn.
Here is a source: http://www.psych.umn.edu/psylabs/mtfs/special.htm
-- for my consideration of Monozygotic Twins sharing brain waves.
I appreciate your response and your idea about Mandarin babies will most likely turn out to be expected, but that does not mean they don't understand the babble based off of body language or the understanding of attempted speech.

I would just advise you to be a little more understanding and kind next time! : ]

first thing I thought when I watched the video: "what terrifying little monsters."

I've watched this several times and I would bet money it's not real. The movements and mannerisms just aren't right for babies that age.

And since I've convinced myself the video is fake, the babies now scare me like they do Casey! I'm reminded of what I heard recently about that movie "Mars Needs Moms"...apparently people have reported feeling weird about the movie but not knowing why; turns out it's because the CGs are just a little TOO realistic and people are subconsciously creeped out.

It's fascinating how children can recognize the expected forms before having the skill to utilize them. This sort of mock conversation seems like it's most common when children are being raised together and are very close in age, like with twins. That's when I've seen it as apparent as it is in this video, at any rate. Have there been any studies of pre-verbal mock conversation?

The video reminds me quite a bit of when my four year old neighbor "wrote me a letter", which consisted entirely of scribbles. The scribbles were very carefully following the lines of the notebook paper, though, and had breaks in them to approximate word length. She couldn't even reproduce a letter A yet, but had seen enough writing to know what it was supposed to look like.

I'm surprised that everyone seems to think this is funny rather than sad. If what these babies are doing is spontaneously (more or less) imitating interactions they have witnessed, they must have been exposed to a lot of rather vehement arguing. I know that these days everyone assumes that families argue a lot, but it seems sad that even at a young age children would have been exposed to so much fighting that they would start to imitate it.

I like that each of them is only wearing one sock. I wonder if they did that themselves. :D

That conversation is definitely about socks.

This is pretty much exactly what goes on at meetings at my workplace. Except for hours, with grown ups. :P

It's definitely about the socks. Between the 2 of them, they have on 3 different socks. They seem to find that laugh worthy. I thought it was cool because it wasn't a bunch of random da da das.

This is a a hilarious translation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynq68aR6MWs

Anyone who's worked in a tech startup will have a good laugh.

Having raised 5 children of my own with each around 2 years apart, I can say with confidence that toddlers this age are extremely vocal with each other. They definitely have "conversations" that result in action. For instance, my 3 year old would babble something to my 1 year old who would pay complete attention, then on cue both of them would head over to the toy box and get a toy. Almost as if the older one said, you wanna go play with toys, and away they went. Hard to describe but I am sure those babies are talking to each other and using completely normal toddler actions and sounds. At least from the perspective of a mother of 5.

Just for your info, in psychodevelopmental terms, this is called canonic babbling.  The children are able to initiate conversations with inflection as well as gesticulations (apparently), but are not yet able to form distinct words or syllables.  Very, very cute.

I'm surprised that no one I've seen in the comments thus far has mentioned idioglossia.  That's what this video is usually used as an example for.  The fact that these two are twins is important.  At this point in their life, they've probably almost never been away from each other, and the "babblings" they're having are likely more than them mimicking Mommy and Daddy.  Children are capable, at exceedingly young ages, of attaching meaning to sounds, and considering these children likely grew up in identical environments, there is likely considerable overlap between their associations of sound and meaning, making a rudimentary language possible, even for these babies.

This depicts an early stage of socialization; obviously they are young, but I feel like you can kind of sense a development of basic human conversation. They respond to each others babbling, and it is often experienced, between humans, the talking over of one another