what is “talking in tongues?” does it sound the same as regular speech? or does it sound like a lot of gobbley gook? if is talking in tongues will another (total stranger ) be able to understand, or will they say something to the order of,“sounds like gobbley gook to me?”
thank you for your replies.
nadahappycamperAs described in the Book of Acts, speaking in tongues (at Pentecost) seemed to be speaking in specific languages (xenoglossia), understandable by native speakers of those “tongues.”
In many modern churches which have traditions of speaking in tongues, the commonest “language” is a heavenly language and is not ordinarily taken to be a language spoken by a specific population anywhere. There is often an interpreter, who interprets any prophetic pronouncement given in this heavenly tongue. There is also a good bit of individual speaking in tongues as a form of worship; these are considered private languages and are an expression of the believers communication with the Holy Spirit. Neither the language for prophecies for the group nor the individual languages are intelligible in any way, in my experience. I’ve often wondered if recording the same individual making the same prophecy on different occasions would result in two entirely different recordings. I bet it would.
Each church system, congregation and individual has their own subtle interpretation of the whole “tongue” notion, so it’s not as if there is a specific rule book to follow.
Try googling “glossolalia.” The Wikipedia article on it might help.
The Chief Pedant has the majority of it right on target. In Acts 2, the apostles preached, and people from virtually everywhere were able to understand them a if they were speaking in the people’s native tongues. By implication [and with the presumption of the story’s truth], either they were preaching in a wide variety of languages they did not themselves know (from at least four distinct stocks, by the way), or the people were empowered to hear what they were saying as though it were their native tongues – whichever way, by the power of the Holy Spirit, according to Luke. Paul’s notes on “speaking in tongues” in I Corinthians 12 and 14 imply the latter was true for its use in the early church, as “speaking in tongues” and “the interpretation of tongues” are listed as distinct spiritual gifts, and the church is cautioned against having someone prophesy in tongues during worship unless someone gifted to interpret it is present also.
Modern Pentecostal and charismatic “speaking in tongues” appears to be exclusively glossolalia – that is, apparent gibberish, with some repetition of phrases and a very limited phoneme stock. (This is not presuming to judge its spiritual value, but looking at6 it from a purely linguistic perspective). On some occasions, a tongues speaker will utter something in an identifiable language, but when this happens, it is a common phrase, and not a message of deep spiritual insight. The phenomenon appears generally to render the speaker in a trance-light state, with a sense of deep peace and oneness combined with spiritual elation.
In other words, it’s always largely gibberish with the occasional snippet of a real foreign language phrase thrown in for good measure. There is absolutely no evidence than anything divine or transcendental is taking place during these occurrences.
Your brain is a pattern matching machine. And as patterns are used more, it becomes easier to repeat them.
Glossolalia appears to be a process of simply letting your brain run free to move your tongue and vocal cord without conscious control. So the end result will be something that tends towards the strongest phonologic patterns of your native language. Predominant sounds will probably be arranged in random order, but to someone who didn’t speak English, it would probably sound roughly the same. If you had a Chinese person speaking in glossolalia there would probably be a lot of tonal sounds that an English speaker wouldn’t use.
I’d also venture to guess that you could create glossolalia on command by putting someone under hypnosis and telling them to make up gibberish.
If you’ll notice, both Chief Pedant and I attempted to answer without making any presuppositions about the phenomenon. I suspect you may be right, but the topic lends itself to GD-type argument, and with it being asked in GQ, I at least tried to couch my answer in GQ terms relative to a question about religion. GQ has always struck me as an inappropriate place to pontificate about metaphysics.
By the way, your first sentence is wrong. In general, it’s always totally apparent gibberish; rarely, it’s partly or totally short utterances in an identifiable language, often but not always one the “tongues speaker” had brief exposure to as a child.
I made no presuppositions. Please read more carefully; I stated simply that there was no evidence that anything divine was occurring during an episode of speaking in tongues. If you have such evidence, by all means, post it.
Speaking in “tongues” just means “speaking in languages”.
The word “language” derives from Latin “lingua” which means tongue and also speech, language.
In Spanish “lengua” means both tongue and language.
In English it still has the meaning of “language”
You still see “mother tongue” for “native language”, but probably in the Bible “language” would be a better translation because most people would understand it better.
This is very interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. Are there any recordings of glossolalia from natives of different languages to compare anywhere around?
Many years ago I read an anthropological report on glossolalia that reported only phonemes and clusters that occurred in the speakers’ native language, a deterioration over time/episodes from more distinctly different phonetic strings to more simplified and repetitive strings, and self-reports from the speakers over time that they felt ill. It’s interesting to ask what the physiological mechanism behind glossolalia may be, and whether it has any relation to dopamine-mediated tic disorders.
I agree with Polycarp – you’re giving a GD response to a GQ question. (You might want to reread the OP again to see what questions are and aren’t being posed there.)
Poly – I was unfamiliar with the “snippets of known tongues” aspect – do you have a cite for that? (I’m not disbelieving you, I’d just like to read a little more about that.)
Then, you’d be wrong, too. There is nothing debatable about my post; there is no evidence of any supernatural forces behind the phenomenon. Even if the OP doesn’t specifically ask about this aspect, it is germane, on topic and factually correct. That’s GQ, unless a GQ mod tells me differently. Since you aren’t one, consider your opinion dismissed.
Is this necessary?
Who speaks glossolalia today? Also, why that and not another language (one that would be understandable to those witnessing the act)?
Was your post? Come to that, was the OP really necessary? Is anything posted here really necessary? Of course not. It’s a stupid question to ask; obviously anyone posting anything here feels they should post what they post; because they wanted to, because they had an opinion to share, whatever. Necessity is irrelevant.
I don’t – I read up on it to the extent possible at the time in the late 80s or early 90s, and recall a researcher finding that some tongues speakers were echoing “Donde esta el baño?”-type phrases from various languages in a relatively small percentage of cases – and that there was a “Bridey Murphy” effect present – what appeared to be subconscious memories of phrases heard when quite young. An Italian phrase might be correlated with childhood memories of an elderly neighbor born and raised in Campania; a Yiddish phrase with a Jewish immigrant great-aunt, etc. Absolutely no idea what the source for that was, though I do remember getting there from Dennis Bennett and Terry Fullam’s books, by an indirect route.
Thanks, Polycarp – it’s been even longer than that since the last time I did any reading on it. I was hoping to take the lazy way out and let you find the sources for me. 
Dark in there, isn’t it? :dubious:
*Note: This is not a warning, just a bit of friendly advice
On the other hand, there is no evidence that there isn’t any supernatural force behind the phenomenon.
Since I’m a GQ mod–I’ll offer that I thought your post was irrelevant in answering the question posed by the OP. If you have something of substance to offer in answer to a General Question, post it. If you don’t, then please try to refrain from throwing in something likely to derail the thread. And please try to not be so confrontational, unless the poster is an absolute wackjob and deserves it. 
samclem Moderator, General Questions
Come on, sam, you know full well that’s not good science.
As to the rest, well, you know me. I do disagree about the relevance (I can point to hundreds of GQ threads where information is given which wasn’t specifically asked for by the OP under the “for completeness’ sake” tradition), but I’ll let it drop.