Speaking in tongues

[Hope]

I have witnessed people speaking in tongues. It is quite an intriguing experience! I myself cannot speak in tongues, though I am a Christian, and I don't believe speaking in tongues makes you somehow more special than other Christians. It is a gift, and different people have different gifts. Just because I do not speak in tongues does not mean I am any less spiritual than someone who does. I have friends who can speak in tongues, and they never looked down on me because I couldn't speak in tongues.

I also have witnessed someone who was demon-possessed (a truly frightening experience!), and while she was possessed she spoke in some unknown language. Either way, my personal belief is that tongues are usually a language from the spiritual realm.

[Mr Spinkles]

Originally Posted by Gerani1248

lol. mr. sprinkles. even i can speak in alien. it would be more believable if the hypnotist made her speak a shanghai dialect of mandarin.

Of course, I didn't mean she was speaking an actual alien language...my point was that when the brain is in certain states, people can speak in something that sounds like another language. Speaking in tongues can easily be tested by recording the session and having it analyzed by linguists, but few are willing to have any recordings analyzed (I wonder why )

[Scott1]

Hello all,

My opinion is that the grace of speaking in tongues has been confused somewhere down the line.

To speak in tongues, as I find it in Scripture is to speak another human language that was not know to the person before the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 2:4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Acts 2:11 Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.

Filled with the Holy Spirit, the faithful were able to communicate with the Cretes and Arabians in their own language.
The "speaking in tongues" that I have seen in the Protestant church has been a hodge podge of unitelligible grunts, groans, screams, and moanings......... not a language of this earth........
When questioned about this practice, a member of the congregation told me that it was the Holy Ghost speaking and that humans could not understand the language.

Although I do not doubt their personal devotion to God, I do agree with some here that this "gift of tongues" is no more than a self-induced altered menal state....... not the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 14:5 I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.

The tongues were meant to be interpreted by someone else, so that the group could benefit from the teaching.

I have found no groups that can speak in the "tongue of angels" and have someone interpret it......... I would bet that most of these are false tongues....

but what do I know?

Peace,
Scott

[Ronald]

There Ya Go!
Again, I agree with the Catholic.

[Surrealgurl]

I agree with Scott. According to those verses, it seems very clear what tongues is supposed to be used for. Do the protestants ignore those few Bible verses? I don't see how it could be interpreted any differently...

[Mister Emu]

Do the protestants ignore those few Bible verses?

Please don't lump all Protestants together, I am one and while having never seen anyone start talking gibberish I find the idea rediculous as well.

I have always viewed speaking in tongues as having the ability to speak languages one could not speak before. I cannot speak Chinese, if all of the sudden I could speak fluent Chinese that would be the gift of tongues.

Also, while I doubt

a hodge podge of unitelligible grunts, groans, screams, and moanings

is speaking in tounge, it may happen that the language spoken is a dead one that very few people know, or one that has been forgotten by humanity completley.

[Surrealgurl]

Oops! Mister Emu, I'm sorry, I don't know why in the world I typed "protestant" there. Perhaps I should have typed "some charismatics". Sorry!

[Mister Emu]

Oops! Mister Emu, I'm sorry, I don't know why in the world I typed "protestant" there. Perhaps I should have typed "some charismatics". Sorry!

No need to be sorry, I understand that some of us(and I use that term very loosely) have some pretty strange ideas.(My mother going so far as to say Catholicism was not the same religion )

I just ask that in the future when you refer to a group of people try to leave room for exception

[Skwim]

Originally Posted by Surrealgurl

2. Is it a real language (or languages)?

It's not a language. In linguistic studies made of various glossolalias none of them showed signs of a structure that could be called language, although they did share some common elements.

Here is one particular assessment taken from a Wikipedia article, which reflects the consensus of these studies.

Linguistics of Pentecostal glossolalia
William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, published a thorough assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia that became a classic work on its linguistic characteristics.[3] His assessment was based on a large sample of glossolalia recorded in public and private Christian meetings in Italy, Holland, Jamaica, Canada and the USA over the course of five years; his wide range included the Puerto Ricans of the Bronx, the Snake Handlers of the Appalachians, and Russian Molokan in Los Angeles.

Samarin found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels taken from a language known to the speaker.

It is verbal behavior that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels[...]in a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart and rearranged pseudogrammatically[...]with variations in pitch, volume, speed and intensity.[4]

[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.[5]

That the sounds are taken from the set of sounds already known to the speaker is confirmed by others: Felicitas Goodman found that the speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language.[6]

Samarin found that the resemblance to human language was merely on the surface, and so concluded that glossolalia is "only a facade of language".[7] He reached this conclusion because the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organised, and– most importantly of all– there was no systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts. Humans use language to communicate, but glossolalia does not. Therefore he concluded that glossolalia is not "a specimen of human language because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives".[7]

On the basis of his linguistic analysis, Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as "meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance,

What other explanations are there for it?

In 2006, the brains of a group of individuals were scanned while they were speaking in tongues. Activity in the language centers of the brain decreased, while activity in the emotional centers of the brain increased. Activity in the area of control decreased, which corresponds with the reported experience of loss of control. There were no changes in any language areas, suggesting that glossolalia is not associated with usual language function.[10][11][12] Other brain wave studies have also found that brain activity alters in glossolalia.[13]

Learned behaviour
The material explanation arrived at by a number of studies is that glossolalia is "learned behavior".[15][19] What is taught is the ability to produce language-like speech. This is only a partial explanation, but it is a part that has withstood much testing. It is possible to train novices to produce glossolalic speech. One experiment with 60 undergraduates found that 20% succeeded after merely listening to a 60-second sample, and 70% succeeded after training:"

(source: ibid)

[Shadow Wolf]

WOW!!! This thread is old! I haven't seen some of these names in a long time.
Speaking in tongues can be explained in a number of ways. Probably the most conventional is a combination of group thought and the placebo effect. It is generally expected among the group that the holy ghost will possess the person and cause him/her to speak in tongues.
Now, I also believe that it is the power of the group that does give life to holy ghost, which is the feeling that overcomes them as they speak in tongues. As a placebo it would mean that an individual is expecting it, so they will do it, but as a group they are channeling energy into what they believe, which is what possesses them.