Originally Posted by drkitten
Actually, it's not hard for a good linguist to distinguish between a genuine but not understood language and made-up gibberish. People can't make up stuff complex enough to be real language.
"...complex enough...", well not sure about that. But a field linguist would spot a phony in a minute or less, I agree.
When I hear glossolalia spoken by an English speaker, it is quite obvious to me that the he is using exactly the same inventory of
phonemes (minimally different sounds that can differentiate meaning) that he uses in English.
For example, one probably does not hear a trilled Spanish "r", or French uvular "r", nor even any non English vowel sounds for that matter that are not phonemic, or
phonetically valid, in English. What about non-aspirate "t, p, or k", as in French, aspirate voiced "bh, dh, gh", or bi-labial voiced fricatives as in Spanish, etc? And no "clicks"?
Now, it would be at least very strange indeed if a foreign language, known or unknown, existed that used only English phonemes, since humans are capable of thousands of variations of vowel, consonant or continuant sounds for, generally, they are produced as a continuum of tongue, larynx, glottis and lip positions. Short of that, it is simply a coded version of English, like pig Latin.
Seems to me that a simple test would be in order. Tape record a session where people "interpret" the meaning of "tongue" utterances. Then, a month later convene the same group to "interpret" it again from the tape and see how much agreement there is between the two sessions. If there is no agreement, what is the point of calling it a tongue or language at all?
