Glossolalia, or simply ’speaking in tongues’ is a phenomenon interested me for some time now. It does, of course, refer to the phenomenon of supposedly speaking some unknown language, especially during religious worship. Explanations as to why people suddenly burst into glossolalia range from divine intervention (a popular one among Pentecostal Christians) to blunt mental illness.

Comparative studies seem to indicate that glossolalia somewhat resembles ordinary language, in so far as it demonstrates some degree of phonological structure, rhythm and accent, yet studies in neuroscience claim that it shows brain activity which differs from everyday speech when it is being uttered.

Finding a video which sufficiently demonstrated the tara ba rumeso kare mapoti shalafa ‘ sound but which doesn’t spill over into religious instruction proved difficult. This is the best I could come up with:

The ‘meaning’ of these utterances is an interesting topic in its own right. Glossolalists believe that ‘tongues’, or whatever you want to call it, actually constitutes a real language, one with its own lexicon and grammar. Yet if asked to repeat what they say or translate it into their native language, most are unable (or are unwilling) to do so. The ability to speak in tongues is, according to them, a divine gift from their deity.

The consensus from the viewpoint of linguistics seems to be that is that glossolalia does not constitute a truly meaningful language. Rather, the seemingly random speech sounds serve as a sort of tool to express deep belief in and attachment to a higher being. Nonetheless, speaking this pseudo-language is generally a deeply significant and emotional experience for the person involved.

Somewhere in the middle there are believers who do think that the descriptions of ‘tongues’ in the new testament (notably in Acts, apparently), refer to the God-given language which modern-day worshippers describe. They do not, however, believe that the utterances of modern-day worshippers, such as those in the following video, relate to this language, dismissing them on-the-spot and meaningless.

I definitely fall into the ‘pseudo-language’ category, but I find the whole thing fascinating nonetheless. I am still amazed at the effect religious belief has on people’s minds, and sit here wondering whether the glossolalists consciously make themselves behave this way, or whether it’s a sort of out-of-body experience.

On the 17th of June, 2009, the Central Statistics Office, Ireland’s public statistics body, saw sense and published the results from every census undertaken here since 1926 on its website, cso.ie. Until very recently, these data were only available to certain people, for certain reasons, and most probably, for a certain amount of money.

83 years' worth of census statistics has been made available to the public.

When I read this article from The Irish Times, I was quite excited at first, the headline bringing connotations of searchable databases, XML files and stylesheets with rounded corners and what have you:

Census data since 1926 available to all and just a few keystrokes away

But, sadly (this being Ireland after all), all the CSO has done is to scan the documents, shovel them into massive PDFs, and hide them away on the site, masked behind a horrific web-interface. I understand that text-mining (especially when OCR is involved) is tricky at the best of times, but surely just a little bit of effort could have been made.

Oh wait. No. Fianna Fáil spent all our money. We can’t afford effort like text-mining.

In any case, I’m sure their publication will prove invaluable to researchers. Have look anyway, if you can brave FrontPage-style websites. Hopefully when (if) the recession ends we’ll be able to pay the nice computer scientists to really digitize this stuff.