Speaking in tongues...

I can't back this up with any sources, but I seem to dimly recall something about "speaking in tongues" sessions generally occuring after extended church services (3+ hours or so) and extended periods of rapid, shallow breating, as would happen from reading aloud or singing.

I may be confusing this with another religious phenomenon. I honestly don't remember for sure. Does this ring a bell with anyone else?
 
sackett said:
If he's a native speaker, the explanation may be something called phonemic regression: hearing loss at frequencies used in speech.
...

But sometimes our minds just don't mesh gears with speech, and that's when wonderful things happen.
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Yes, I meant this and not physical problems - it's usually just a sentence or two, then I realise and can understand them perfectly. I have it in airports if I've spent a few months in a non-English speaking county. You can get interesting responses from people when you apologise for not speaking their language - in their language.
 
years ago I attended an apostolic pentacostal church with a friend.

Tongues were a big part of thier faith, it was the sign one had been 'saved'.

When asked I said I had never spoken in tongues.

There was tongues practice at this church to ensure one was still saved. Practice consisted of repeating 'thank you jesus' nonstop for up to an hour.

I did this and about 30 minutes into it my tongue got so tired I started speaking gibberish. I assure you it was no supernatural event. Because I had lost the ability to speak clearly and felt like a fool I stopped to rest my tongue. The woman next to me who was there to help me speak in tongues mildly chastised me for 'resisting the spirit'. She said I was getting the 'gift', but I refused it.

So, I don't have a whole lot of respect for the intellect of those who believe they speak in tongues.
 
Tongue-speakers sometimes mix incomprehensible words with normal language. In that long-ago documentary about Marjoe, you can hear a man shouting at first in English and then lapsing into something that sounds like speech but isn't.

Extreme examples of speaking in tongues don't really sound like speech to my old ears. They remind me of the way I used to utter "pretend" languages when I was a small child, e.g., imitating the Polish I heard on the radio: non-stop mouth-music just for the fun of it.

V. S. Naipaul, in one of his novels, has an ecstatic believer repeatedly crying, "And Mary lay dong and the child lay dong!" I assume that here he was using something he'd actually encountered.

As for practicing to talk in tongues: How do you say "hypocrite" in Corrected Egyptian?
 
Re: It gets 2 demme complicated!

sackett said:
As for hearing Norwegian, that's not so strange. Norwegian and English are close enough cognates that sometimes a sentence in one will be comprehensible in the other; I'm sure that when you were in Scandinavia you often picked up words you could figure out. In brief, you do slightly understand Norwegian.
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Hi,

I have some Norwegian friends and I am a little baffled at the statement that Norwegian and English can have sentences comprehensible in both languages... (Have you ever *heard* Norwegian???) Could you provide me/us with some examples, to impress with? It would be nice if they are sentences that actually mean something useful and would be "normal" for representatives of both languages.

The second part (picking up a few words) I believe, and I think it is a more likely reason for replying "on topic" to the request of going indoors due to cold.

Mosquito
 
If the song adiemus proved anything, it proved that it's actually quite difficult to come up with pleasant sounding words that don't mean anything in any language.
 
When I was about 12-13, I was living in Bolivia South America because my parents were missionaries. Anyhow, this church group was visiting from the USA and doing some mission work at the school and church where my parents worked. I remember one night, the church group was having a prayer group meeting, or something like that. They invited me to come. They asked me if I had ever spoken in tongues, and I said no. I had heard "speaking in tongues" many times before in our church, but never experienced it myself. The church group was very excited because they believed that on that night I would be filled with the holy spirit.

Anyway, fast forward to later that night, I am on my knees with about 8 people around me, one of their hands touching me, and the other hand outstretched, waving back and forth. Their praying is almost a chanting.

Man am I uncomfortable! I want out. I decide to fake it. They're Americans, they don't speak Spanish. So I start praying in Spanish--a foriegn tongue, I think to myself. One of them looks at me and says, "No, not in Spanish."

I knew at this point I had nothing left to do but fake it comepletely. Otherwise these people would surround me and chant on forever. I had heard "speaking in tongues." I knew what it sounded like. So I mimiced (sp?) what I had heard.

They bought it. Their chanting eventually stopped, and they all congratulated me on being filled with the holy ghost.

I couldn't believe it.
 
I think I told this tale on another thread, but I'll tell it again since it's on topic: One day, back in college, I was walking around the conference room area of the Student Union when I heard a shouting and screaming coming from one of the rooms. Being an upstanding citizen, I ran to the sound of the screaming to see what aid I could render. I found myself to one of the conference rooms with about a dozen people, some standing by themselves, other in small groups with their hand held up to the air. They were wailing, babbling, and gibbering loudly, throwing in an "Halleluiah" and "hosana" every so often. It turns out that they were the local chapter of Campus Crusade For Christ, and they were in middle of a prayer meeting.

I backed out of the room VERY slowly.
 
I sat in on a Quaker silent meeting once. It was the exact opposite of that.
 
Re: It gets 2 demme complicated!

sackett said:
Can you confirm something for me? I've seen bilingual English/Welsh signs, and I get the impression that it takes one helluva lot longer to express modern concepts in Cwmry. For example, at a Welsh post office, the mail slot is indicated in English, "Deposit Mail Here." Simple, short, colorless. But the Welsh goes on for a paragraph or more, all mllyhwdhms and cimllyllms and wllmghaugs. How are they expressing that simple idea? "Cast in here the written leaf, that the Saxons may convey it at our bidding across the sea's wise waves, to their confoundment and to lift the singing hearts of we, the children of the Milesians!" Or am I being unfair to the taffs?
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It's not just Cwglmish. Check out the instruction book that comes with any new electrical appliance. The English translation is almost always the shortest. English is more concise than most other languages, largely as a result of having more words - often other languages will require a phrase to translate a single English word.
 
c4ts said:
I sat in on a Quaker silent meeting once. It was the exact opposite of that.
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Heh... I'll say this much for having been Catholic (father's side of family): They practice their faith with a certain amount of dignity. I have been to several Protestant services (mother's-side of the family) and they had the tendency to devolve into three-ring-circuses; laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, and other ceremonies that no self-respecting human (Papist, or otherwise) would participate in.

Not that would go back to the RCC. Goofy beliefs are no less goofy even if you're quiet about them.
 
c4ts said:
I sat in on a Quaker silent meeting once. It was the exact opposite of that.
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I did as well. It was nice. Only one person spoke, and he was going on about evironmental issues--it seemed.

But I enjoyed the silence.
 
One of the girls said "Let's go back inside, it's a bit cold". And I replied, "Yeah, it is a bit chilly, let's go". And they all looked at me in astonishment, because she'd spoken in Norwegian which is not a language I understand even slightly.
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Norwegian is not that disimilar to English, particularly when we are talking about basic language like 'I am cold' (very proto-Germanic). Also, as you say, the gestures help.
 
From what I remember of the teachings of the good Sisters of Notre Dame (yes, I survived Catholic school), it was the other way around. The apostles at first and then eventually others who Spread The Word were able to speak so that all men could understand them (what, women weren't allowed to hear The Word in them there days?). It wasn't that no one could understand, everybody could, and no interpreter needed.

And what happens when the interpreter and the speaker don't agree? How do you sing "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" when under the 'influence' of The Spirit?
 
pmckean said:
Anyway, both of then go off to a prayer meeting the other day, and when my g'friend comes back, she's crying. Her sister, she tells me, was possessed by the Holy Spirit, collapsed in ecstasy and started babbling in tongues.
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Why was your girlfriend crying terars of happiness or tears of sorrow?
 
Zep said:
Tell her that her babbling needs to be properly recorded and then examined by a language expert before you will even consider that this was actually what happened. In other words, challenge her to provide the evidence. It should make her consider seriously how much she wants you to believe her, and thus how much she wants to accept what she THINKS has happened.
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To my way of thinking, this is the only real answer.

Let's face one fact about "speaking in tongues." It's nothing more than some hoodoo that makes you feel better about yourself, that somehow, you're one of the "ins," but when the babbling stops, ask yourself: what has been gained by anyone else? Have you edified or uplifted anyone else by spewing this gibberish all over creation? No. Have you solved any problems with this? No. All you've done is made yourself and the rest of your congregation look like imbeciles.
 
pmckean said:

Anyway, both of then go off to a prayer meeting the other day, and when my g'friend comes back, she's crying. Her sister, she tells me, was possessed by the Holy Spirit, collapsed in ecstasy and started babbling in tongues.
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She was having an episode! Put a tounge under her wallet! Oh wait...
 
Roadtoad said:
To my way of thinking, this is the only real answer.

Let's face one fact about "speaking in tongues." It's nothing more than some hoodoo that makes you feel better about yourself, that somehow, you're one of the "ins," but when the babbling stops, ask yourself: what has been gained by anyone else? Have you edified or uplifted anyone else by spewing this gibberish all over creation? No. Have you solved any problems with this? No. All you've done is made yourself and the rest of your congregation look like imbeciles.
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Speaking as someone who escaped from an extremely glossolaliaphilic church (is that even a word!?), I wholeheartedly agree with this. I was an outsider until I started babbling, then they took me in and initiated me into the Inner Secrets.

Well, not quite. But it felt a bit like that.
 
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