If a person is speaking in tongues, he is speaking a language of men or of angels. There is no difference between the tongues they spoke in the first century and the tongues being spoken today.
The above is correct (with the exception of 'angelic language'), only if you are referring to real language. Modern T-speech is not at all what is being described in Biblical references to ‘tongues’.
So if corrected to read: “If a person is speaking a language (presumably a foreign one), he is speaking a language of men. There is no difference between the languages they spoke in the first century and the languages being spoken today.” I would agree with this 100%.
(All my references to ‘tongues’ below refer to ‘modern tongues’ / T-speech. See above)
Some people are quick to tell me that I am trying to ‘explain/understand the spiritual in earthly terms’, or something along those lines. There are indeed many intangible things in religion that that must be taken on faith alone; they cannot really be proven, nor can they be disproven.
Tongues however are not one of these things – they are something very tangible, something very physical. Tongues can be and have been examined, analyzed and studied with all results yielding the same conclusions.
Tongues are completely self-created, whether speakers are consciously aware of it or not. As a result, each and every one of the countless number ‘spoken’ is, for the most part, unique to its speaker; no two will ever be quite the same.
Tongues are simply not what their speakers want, perceive, or need them to be.
Whether describing the Christian or non-Christian practice, tongues are simply a tool by which one may establish a closer relationship with the divine and/or strengthen one’s spiritual path. Tongues are also frequently used to aid in healing (whether spiritual or physical in nature).
Use of this tool is highly dependent on one’s faith; the two go hand-in-hand. Tongues cannot correctly be used without faith, no matter what religious path that faith may encompass. For many, both Christians and non-Christians alike, tongues are in fact a very powerful tool.
For all that though, tongues remain simply a tool created by their speakers; nothing more, nothing less. In and of themselves, they are neither divine nor mysterious.