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I've learned that twins in English are always plural, e.g. there are the twins. Then how do we count twins? If there are four people coming, those are two twins? There are two twins? What if there are two people coming, who are twins. There are one twins? Or still There is one twin?
My misunderstanding stems from the fact that the Dutch word "tweeling" (singular) refers to a single pair of twins (two people), and "tweelingen" (plural) would imply at least two sets of twins.
Hmm. But in this comedy movie called Twins, there is only one set.
– gerrit – 2013-01-23T21:57:56.147@gerrit Right. There is only one set in the film, but the title does not specify—there could be 40000 twins, and they could still call the movie twins. That is not a particularly good example. – please delete me – 2013-01-23T21:59:06.417
And in case there is a word that has only a plural, you use "one [something] of." Like "There's a hole in one of the legs of the trousers". – SF. – 2013-01-23T22:03:58.560
1"Twin" means the individual, not the pair. If you mean both of them, you would say "a pair of twins" or "a set of twins". If you say "there are two twins", that would mean two people who are both twins. We'd probably generally assume they are twins of each other, but that wouldn't necessarily be the case. It would be quite reasonable to say, "We have two people in this room who are twins", without meaning that they are twins of each other. – Jay – 2013-04-30T15:15:40.443