Why “Tongues” Are Not Language - Part 1 of 2

Part 1 -

A question frequently asked by tongues-speakers is “How do you know (modern) “tongues” are not a language; heavenly, angelic, or otherwise?”

That’s a great question, but one that definitely does not have a quick and easy answer.

I have tried to summarize an answer below as best and concisely as I can.

At the risk of sounding blunt, for a linguist, real languages, whether currently spoken or long dead, are immediately recognizable as such.

By this I mean that it may take a bit to identify the actual specific language, but it will nonetheless be recognized as real rational language.

This simply does not happen with modern Pentecostal/Charismatic tongues. In fact, it does not happen with any type of glossolalia, whether spoken by a Christian here in the US or an Evenki shaman in Siberia.

Okay dude, sure. What do you mean by “immediately recognizable” – frankly, that doesn’t sound overly convincing; it’s your word against mine!

Let me set a backdrop of sorts – some people are quick to tell me that I am trying to ‘explain/understand the spiritual in earthly terms’, or something along those lines, or that there are thousands of languages in the word, how can you possibly know tongues is not one of these (whether ancient or modern)??

There are indeed many intangible things in religion that that must be taken solely on faith alone; they cannot 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.


So how/why is modern tongues not a language?

Well, language, regardless of where it may be spoken, at its most basic level can be described as minimally consisting of two things: (1) discrete units of various sorts, and (2) rules and principles that govern the way these discrete units can be combined and ordered. As we shall see, modern tongues do not meet either criteria.

When discussing what makes up ‘language’, there are a number of factors one must consider. Let’s start with one of the easier ones; phonology.

Phonology, when speaking about a particular language, concerns itself with the sounds found in that given language and how those sounds are put together such that the result is acceptable to all speakers of that language. Phonology also defines what is allowed and disallowed with respect to how these sounds are put together. In addition, suprasegmental elements, i.e. things like stress, accent/pitch/tone are also considered.

With tongues (hereafter T-speech), phonology is unique to the phenomenon; that is, a speaker’s T-speech will only contain those sounds found in that speaker’s native language and any other language s/he may be familiar with (actively or passively).

It’s important to keep in mind that the sounds of a person’s T-speech may also contain those found in other languages the speaker is familiar with – this is something that’s frequently overlooked and leads people to think that because some sounds produced do not occur in the speaker’s native language, that speaker’s T-speech must be a legitimate language.

Further, even within that set of sounds (called a ‘phonemic inventory’) a ‘tongue’ will typically only contain a select smaller number (i.e. a subset) of those sounds. Typically, this subset consists of sounds in a given phonemic inventory that are easier to produce in the vocal tract than the ones excluded. For example, it’s much easier to produce a ‘sh’ sound than it is to produce a ‘j’ sound. The ‘sh’ does not require as great a deal of effort to produce.

As a result of the above, no two “tongues” will ever sound the same; there are as many different “tongues” as there are speakers.

What is also found in T-speech is that any disallowed combinations of sounds in the speaker’s native language (and those s/he is also familiar with) will also be disallowed in the speaker’s T-speech.

For the most part, accent, tone, word stress, etc. will usually echo the speaker’s native language.

As a result of the above, a speaker’s T-speech will never contain a different, unique phonemic inventory specific to that ‘tongue’ which totally differs from the speaker’s native language. We are simply dealing with a subset of the sounds found in the speaker’s native language typically containing the easiest sounds to produce (physiologically).

As a simple example, an American English speaker’s T-speech will never contain the click sounds found in some languages of southern Africa (unless, of course, that speaker has had exposure in some way with those languages).

One curious thing that American speakers tend to do concerns the ‘r’ sound. Rather than produce the usual American ‘r’ (as in “red”), they will either turn it into a single flap (like the ‘t’ in most people’s pronunciation of “water”), or they’ll produce a trilled ‘r’ as found in various European languages.

Why is this done? Well, it makes the T-speech sound less like American English and speakers tend to perceive what they’re producing as more “foreign sounding”, a more ‘legit language’.

The simple fact however that ‘tongues’ do not contain any unique sounds not found in the speaker’s own language(s) cannot be the sole defining factor of whether you have an actual language or not.

Other factors also need to be considered.

Syllable structure may be taken into account, but really only marginally – typically the syllables of T-speech are simplified to an all open pattern; that is, they consist of Consonant + Vowel (CV) despite the fact that the speaker’s native language can contain closed syllables (CVC).

But, the fact that the syllable structure of T-speech is simplified from the speaker’s own, again, does not constitute ‘non-language’; there are plenty of languages in the word that have this type of syllable structure (Polynesian languages come immediately to mind).

The main defining factor for most Linguists with respect to T-speech is the ‘words’ themselves.

Let me try and explain. Every language contains something called ‘morphemes’. These are the smallest meaningful units in a given language. Morphemes come in two flavors; free and bound.

As an example, take the word “players” – this word contains three morphemes; one free, two bound. ‘Play’ is a verb; it describes an action. It is also a free morpheme as it can stand alone as a word all by itself.

The ‘–er’ is a morpheme of English that creates a noun out of the verb denoting the ‘doer’ of the action described in the verb. In this case the ‘–er’ indicates “(some)one who plays”. It is a bound morpheme since ‘-er’ cannot be used on its own.

Finally, we have the ‘-s’. This is the plural marker in English and it is also a bound morpheme. So ‘players’ has three distinct morphemes which make up the word: “play +er +s”. Each one of these morphemes has both function and meaning.

My point is that for something to be language, regardless where or by whom spoken, it must contain morphemes; they are the bits and pieces that create language itself – sounds are put together in syllables and syllables are used to create morphemes. Without morphemes, you don’t have language. It’s just that simple. You may have something that sounds like a legit language, but it’s just a façade; it’s not language at all.

These morphemes in turn are put together to make words (as in our example of “players” above). Words are then put together to make phrases by means of a defined grammar.

The phrases I’m referring to are linguistic phrases found in language; for example, a Noun-Phrase (NP).

A noun-phrase contains an optional article (definite or indefinite, i.e. ‘the’ or’ a/an’) + a noun + an optional plural marker, so: NP = (article) NOUN (plural marker). Other examples of such phrases include a verb phrase, adjective phrase, prepositional phrase, adverb phrase, etc.

All languages have some type of grammar – grammar being simply an agreed upon way in which these phrases are put together to make a cohesive, intelligible sentence to speakers of that language. Grammar also involves an agreed upon way in which to order these words/phrases. This is known as syntax.

Here’s the thing…..

T-speech does not contain any of the above features. You cannot write a ‘sentence’ down in T-speech and break it down into linguistic phrases and then break those phrases down into individual morphemes. T-speech does not contain morphemes and, as mentioned above, without morphemes, you don’t have language.

In looking at a ‘sentence’ in T-speech, it is not possible to point to a given ‘word’ and say, “this means ‘X’”, or “this little part on this word here denotes the plural.”

Further, a given morpheme in a language cannot have several different ‘interpretations/meanings’.