Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Glossolalia |
GlossolaliaNoun1. Repetitive nonsense speech. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Glossolalia comprises the utterance of what appears (to the casual listener) either as an unknown foreign language, or as simply nonsense syllables; the utterances sometimes occur as part of religious worship (religious glossolalia), and sometimes as a result of mental illness.Some Christianss (see below) regard glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, as a gift of God through the Holy Spirit -- one of the Gifts of the Spirit. They define glossolalia as divinely-inspired language. Other religions also use glossolalia as a component of worship.
From a linguistic point of view, the syllables that make up instances of glossolalia typically appear to be unpatterned reorganizations of phonemes from the primary language of the person uttering the syllables; thus, the glossolalia of people from Russia, Britain, and Brazil all sound quite different from each other, but vaguely resemble the Russian, English, and Portuguese languages, respectively. Linguists generally regard most glossalia as lacking any identifiable semantics, syntax, or morphology--i.e., as nonsense and not as language at all.
Christian view of speaking in tongues
Tongues in the New Testament
In the New Testament, the book of Acts recounts how "tongues of fire" descended upon the heads of the Apostles, accompanied by the miraculous occurrence of speaking in languages unknown to them, but recognizable to others present as particular foreign languages. Not only their peers, but also anyone else in the room who spoke any other language, could understand the words that the Apostles spoke. The book of Acts described the phenomenon in terms of a miracle of universal translation.
This Biblical case exemplifies religious xenoglossia, i.e., miraculously speaking in an actual foreign language that the speaker does not know. Many conservative Pentecostal Christians maintain that if the glossolalia does not manifest an actual human language, then it is not a genuine manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
Contemporary Christian Glossolalia
Some Christians have claimed that they have witnessed, or personally engaged in, soi-disant "speaking in tongues". These claims have particular importance in the Pentecostal and in the Charismatic traditions. The belief that the gifts of the Apostles (Acts 2) continue to persist in the modern world forms a fundamental point of Pentecostal doctrine.Curiously, however, Christian fundamentalists have developed since about 1800 a definition of the term glossolalia that stands in precise opposition to what the New Testament describes. In reported instances of "speaking in tongues", observers tend to agree that no understanding occurs at all. Instead, witnesses report a stream of incoherent and meaningless syllables, incomprehensible to speakers of any known language.
Pentecostalists and some other religious adherents hold that this religious glossolalia comprises, at least in some cases, bona fide language inspired by the Holy Spirit: utterances in a language usually unknown to both the speaker and to the listeners. Some other Christians hold that that all, or almost all, modern glossolalia has bogus origins, neither divinely inspired nor language-based. Contemporary Christians believe much more readily that the original instances of Christian glossolalia, as reported in the book of Acts, exemplified bona fide instances of actual human languages.
Links:
- Bible 411 on Glossolalia
- The Skeptic's Dictionary on Glossolalia
- Glossolalia, an online book by Rene Noorbergen
- Google search
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Glossolalia."
Crosswords: Glossolalia |
| Non-English Usage: "Glossolalia" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Portuguese (glossolalia). |
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
| ||
Music |
| ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
glossolalia | 16 |
glossolalia scient | 3 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "glossolalia"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Danish | glossolali. (various references) | |
Dutch | glossolalie, glossolalia, extatisch spreken. (various references) | |
French | glossolalie. (various references) | |
German | Glossolalie. (various references) | |
Greek | γλωσσολαλία. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ossolaliaglay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | glossolalia. (various references) | |
Spanish | glosolalia. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | glossa. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "glossolalia": glossolalias. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-g-i-l-l-l-o-o-s-s" | |
-3 letters: galliass, salsilla. | |
-4 letters: glossal, isologs. | |
-5 letters: assail, assoil, glossa, igloos, isolog, saigas, salals, salols, siglos. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-g-i-l-l-l-o-o-s-s" | |
+1 letter: glossolalias. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
