Glossolalia facts for kids
Glossolalia, also known as speaking in tongues, is when someone speaks very quickly in sounds that don't seem to make sense. It sounds a bit like real speech, but it's not a language people can understand. For some people, especially in certain Christian groups like Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, it's a special part of their religious worship. They might see it as a holy language.
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Understanding Glossolalia
Glossolalia involves making rapid, speech-like sounds. These sounds are often made up of syllables. However, these syllables do not form words that anyone can understand. It is different from speaking a foreign language.
Religious Practice
In many Christian faiths, speaking in tongues is seen as a spiritual gift. People believe it is a way to communicate with God. It is a common practice in Pentecostal and Charismatic forms of Christianity. They believe the Holy Spirit helps them speak in this way.
What Linguists Say About Glossolalia
Scientists who study language are called linguists. They have looked closely at glossolalia to understand it better.
A Study on Speaking in Tongues
In 1972, a linguist named William Samarin from the University of Toronto studied glossolalia. He recorded many examples of people speaking in tongues. These recordings came from Christian meetings in places like Italy, the Netherlands, Jamaica, Canada, and the US.
How Glossolalia Sounds
Samarin found that glossolalia sounds a bit like human language. The speaker uses different accents and rhythms. They also change their intonation (the rise and fall of their voice). They use pauses, just like in normal speech. Each part of the speech is made of syllables. These syllables use consonants and vowels that the speaker already knows from their own language.
Samarin described it as: The speaker uses a certain number of consonants and vowels. These are put together into a limited number of syllables. These syllables are then arranged into longer units. The speaker changes their pitch, volume, speed, and how strongly they speak.
Is It a Real Language?
Even though glossolalia sounds like a language, Samarin found it was only on the surface. He called it "only a facade of language." This means it looked like a language but wasn't truly one.
Here's why:
- The sounds did not form real words.
- The speech was not organized inside.
- Most importantly, the sounds did not connect to ideas or meanings.
Humans use language to share thoughts and information. But glossolalia does not do this. Samarin concluded that glossolalia is not a human language. This is because it is not organized and does not connect to the world we understand. He defined Pentecostal glossolalia as "meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead." This means it has sounds like a language, but no real meaning. It also doesn't match any known language, whether it's still spoken or not.
Images for kids
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Headline about the "Weird babel of tongues" and other behavior at Azusa Street, from a 1906 Los Angeles Times newspaper.
See also
In Spanish: Glosolalia para niños
