ooh, i'm an expert for once!
i was raised in a 'pentacostal' church, and attended a christian school there as well, until grade 11. i once viewed speaking in tongues and other oddities as neccessary for the salvation of my soul i have witnessed speaking tongues thousands of times, literally.
most churches which accept glossalia break it into two different types. firstly, one may speak in an actual language which they do not usually know or understand such as swahili (as recorded in the book of Acts in the NT). or, one may speak in 'the tongues of angels'. i never heard anyone speaking in a foreign language, but at times i have heard a hundred people or more speaking in the angelic tongue at one time.
if one speaks in tongues in a church, they are supposed to have an interpetor translate what they are saying, but i rarely saw this.
it is interesting to note that each church i went to had a general 'feel' to the sound of the glossalia. just now i easily spoke 'in tongues', to see if i could create a believable sound. . if i went back to my childhood church and spoke in such a way, they would instantly accept that i was filled with the Holy Spirit. it cannot be written as easily as typed, but i'll give it a go phonetically. usually it starts with a long drawn out 'O...", and is a short phrase repeated over and over with slight variations.
O... sha la ma kae ta see lo, ka na na na mae so a see ah...
this is interesting, as i never once spoke in tongues when i truly desired to do so, as a manifestation of God indwelling me. i realize now it is because i was waiting for something outside myself to move my tongue, when what was truly required was for me to initiate it. i can recall pastors saying 'you must open your mouth, and allow it to flow..."
i have attended similar churches in a different province, and found that it sounds quite different. i read a study once which discovered that those who 'spoke in tongues' had widely varying intonations depending upon their native language.
for instance, if one's native language had clicks or staccato tongue soundings, they were often found in their angelic voicings. one would expect that if glossalia is truly divinely inspired, and an angelic language, it would be fairly uniform, but this seems to be true only locally. different locations with little cross-seeding have very different variations.
it is interesting that the greek Oracles at Delphi had a similar ritual around 400 BC. one would ask the priestess a question, and she would respond in unintelligible babble, which a priest would then interpet.
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