The gift of tongues

[yuvgotmel]

…. the elements or base of language is the same across languages, so that for instance, all babies know and produce all sounds present in all known (or once known) languages, for instance even click languages or others that might be impossible to speak once the time of being able to learn language has passed (age 5 or so). Another thing is that syntax, while it varies in languages, develops in infants more or less the same. They don't just randomly play with language, but in a specific way. So that Chinese and English and Swedish and whatever other babies all have the same basic syntax at a certain level. So the basis of language is all the same. All babies with normal development learn language (unlike math or reading or some other kinds of skills). There is no ineffective or bad or primitive language. Stone age peoples have as complex and rich language (perhaps not as many words) as technologically advanced people. This is unique of all abilities, and indicates a deeper level of language.

Yes. True. From what I have read and listened to (via lectures), linguists say that a child can learn any language. From what I can gather from my research, the same sounds contained in current known languages are the same as they were many thousands of years ago. (Not all languages contain all of those sounds, but they do exist scattered in various languages.)

I am personally dubious of what glossolalia has to do with language, even this base language ability (I think sometimes termed deep language). After all, I believe that no one has claimed that this deep language has a particularly sound. Nor does anyone think that this particular deep language was the "spoken language" ever, even when at some point there may have been one tongue (certainly not as late as anyone in the Hebrew Bible would have known of, this is clearly a myth of language-- in my term myth, I don't mean LIE, I mean the inner truth or an attempt at history, etc.). My feeling of glossolalia is that it is a hyper-aware and sensitized state of some kind, similar to a trance. I think it is not unique to Pentocostal type Christianity, but I couldn't say this for sure.

I am personally dubious of glossolalia too, but for other reasons. And, you are right to say that, when the Hebrew texts were written, such a language was most likely not spoken (at least cognitively).

The Hebrew account, from Genesis, along with the Babylonian writings (and even to a lesser extent the tale of the Sirens from Homer’s “Odyssey&#8221 all describe a similar thing. According to one of the foremost Cuniform experts in the world, Samuel Noah Kramer, the Babylonian account of the demise of a uniform (or universal) language occurred through Enki’s “namshub.” A namshub, as Kramer described, was an incantation. And when the namshub was read (concerning the dispersion of a single languages into multiple forms), it acted to do the thing which it concerned. Much like Homer’s “Odyssey,” hearing the incantation caused the listeners to obey the words. Also, in the Genesis account, it is a highly controversial part of the Torah for Jewish rabbis, because it speaks of “God” in the plural form; and even more suspicious, it speaks of “God” in an anthropomorphic sense: “Let us go down and confuse men’s speech.”

All that aside, it is fascinating that our modern-English and similar-sounding word “babble”—in sound-relation to the account of an ancient city Babel—contains a definition fitting for what could be described (by a listener) as the practice of glossolalia. In Neal Stephenson’s novel, which has gotten much attention and respect (for a mere novel), he wrote (quoting Kramer’s work) that the word “Babel” is “probably also somewhat onomatopoeic, imitating someone who speaks in an incomprehensible tongue.”

The Kabbalists have claimed that there was once an Edenic language, where all people spoke the same. However, linguists have worked to trace a possible “mother tongue” (a once one-world language), but they have not been successful. That has not stopped them from trying and continuing to research, even, more currently, into the African indigenous tongues.

As far as the esoteric nature of the meaning of these accounts of the dispersion of speech, some have said that it refers to religions—to be specific, the creation of multiple religions, in order to cause “contention” between groups of people. And in ways, the Greek account, in Homer’s “Odyssey” does allude to this as well.

Personally, I do not know if there was ever a comprehensive, “universally-”spoken mother tongue. (I use the word “universally” in quotations because that word—at least for me—opens up a realm beyond Planet Earth. Yet, the translations of the Babylonian writings do say that language was “universal,” at one time.)

As I wrote in my first post on this thread, the practice of glossolalia most likely is not the equivalent of such a “universal language”; and I, too, feel that the practice (of glossolalia) is highly dubious. However, it is interesting, in that, the practice originated well before the invention of Christianity (found even in Egyptian inscriptions on the pyramid walls and other religious texts, such as Gnostic ones). Also, the extraordinary abilities written in the New Testament seem to mimic a universally-comprehensive tongue. The emphasis here is on “comprehensive,” because, as Paul later wrote, the sounds should be “intelligible.” --That is not what I have heard from the Pentecostals’ practice of “speaking in tongues,” nor the recordings of non-Christian tribes that claim the spirits are speaking from them. And, according to linguists and from what I have heard (in recordings), the sounds produced, from the practice of glossolalia, are the same in all religions; and there is no distinction, to the listener, between the Pentecostals and the people from non-Christian beliefs.

Whether or not, the sounds produced from the practice of glossolalia are the once-told-about “universal language,” I doubt it. Yet it does give insight that such a language/frequency(?) or something similar might have been more understand long ago; and then the practice was merely handed down—without the knowledge and comprehension of it—through the ages. It does remind me though of the time when Moses was told to speak to the rock, in order to make the water come forth. And I do believe that such a language, if tapped into, has the ability to do just that (manipulate matter)…at least in theory.

All that I have written most likely refers to sound technology—which appears, from writings and practices, to have been more widely understood in the linear past than it is today.