Xenoglossia

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Xenoglossia (from ancient Greek ξένος xénos "foreign" and γλῶσσα glō̃ssa "tongue", "language") is the alleged ability to speak a foreign language without having learned it. This phenomenon is reported in a religious and esoteric context. It is also sometimes claimed that xenoglossia occurs under hypnosis . This term was coined at the beginning of the 20th century by Charles Richet ( Traité de Métapsychique. 1923).

Explanations

The simplest explanation is an unconscious memory ( cryptomnesia ) of the respective person of foreign language idioms that they have heard at some point. Another hypothesis examined in parapsychology is reincarnation , in which the xenoglossal language is remnants of a language learned in a previous life. The main exponent of this research is the professor of psychiatry Ian Stevenson . In particular, “reactive” (responsive) xenoglossy, in which meaningful answers (with additional vocabulary) are given spontaneously to any question in the foreign language, serves to underpin this possibility. However, the first linguistic analyzes are reporting criticism. However, there are hardly any scientific studies of xenoglossia.

Xenoglossia in Christianity

In the Bible in the Acts of the Apostles there is a xenoglossy event in connection with the Pentecost event ( Acts 2, 4–13  EU ): According to the report, the apostles and their companions were filled with the Holy Spirit during the festival in Jerusalem and festival visitors from different people Areas they heard talking in their respective language, which on the one hand astonished and on the other hand was seen as drunkenness.

Xenoglossia must not be confused with the glossolalia, which is particularly widespread in the Pentecostal movement , where worshipers also speak in an incomprehensible language, but neither they nor others expect to understand what has been said.

However, there are also anecdotal reports of xenoglossia. The New Testament scholar Nicholas Thomas Wright writes in his interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles that there are well-attested cases, both in ancient times and in modern times, where Christians suddenly spoke in a language completely unknown to them and then discovered that one of those present she understood. He has met people who have encountered this and has no reason to assume that they were trying to deceive himself or him.

Ian Stevenson and the "Gretchen" case

The Dolores Jay case (also called the Gretchen case ) is an unresolved hypnotic case of the reincarnation type with German xenoglossia.

In 1970 the American Methodist pastor Caroll Jay hypnotized his wife Dolores (* 1922) in Mount Orab (Ohio) to treat her back pain. She spoke xenoglossal German. At a detailed meeting three days later, Gretchen Gottlieb appeared for the first time, who reported the hypnotic regressions recorded in 19 of her life as the daughter of the mayor of Eberswalde , Hermann Gottlieb, and who died in an ambiguous way at the age of 16.

In September 1971 Ian Stevenson, who spoke German himself, took part in a meeting for the first time. He investigated the phenomenon until 1974 and brought the case to the public. Stevenson was also present when Dolores Jays was questioned with a polygraph by Richard Archer in New York on February 5, 1974. After 1974 no more regressions could take place (partly because of the criticism from the Christian community).

Stevenson later explored Dolores' childhood in Clarksburg, West Virginia . German ancestry was only found to a very limited extent (Dolores Jay's great-great-grandparents immigrated to America from Germany before 1847). Indirect evidence points to the last quarter of the 19th century as the time when the Gretchen incarnation, if real, should have taken place.

The philosopher Paul Edwards is one of the main critics of Stevenson. His verdict: "Stevenson's main problem is that he does not want to investigate the (alleged) cases of rebirth, but to prove it".

The linguistics professor Sarah G. Thomason also criticizes the results achieved by Ian Stevenson and their interpretation, especially in the case of "Gretchen". Thomason emphasizes that Stevenson was careful and cautious in his investigations and that there is no allegation of fraud. But she considers his approach to be methodologically and linguistically wrong and therefore flawed. Among other things, it is criticized:

  • The experiments were carried out by people who believed in reincarnation themselves, and the answers could be freely interpreted as right / wrong ( experimenter effect ).
  • The questions were repeated in English if Gretchen did not immediately answer the German question.
  • The largest group of questions consisted of simple yes / no questions, which means that 50% can expect correct answers if the answer is guessed.

Regarding language acquisition in general, Thomason states: “You cannot converse in a language if you do not know it and have not spoken it regularly for a fairly long period of time.” In their mother tongue, a person has a vocabulary of up to 10,000 Words and mastered the basic grammatical rules. You can roughly communicate with 400–800 words. Gretchen, on the other hand, only used a little more than 120 German words in the conversations - and these include words that are acoustically similar in English and German ("brown"). Grammatical knowledge is almost never evident in her, as she usually only answers with one or two words. Much of Gretchen's German is spoken the way a native English speaker would read German. You also don't find the familiar pattern with it that you understand a (forgotten) language better than you speak it (passive and active vocabulary).

Stevenson admits that the “conversations” with his subjects had very little to do with a “normal” conversation. An example:

Question: "What is there after sleeping?"
Answer: "Sleep ... bed room."

Stevenson evaluates this answer as "correct" because it is in some way related to the question. Thomason, on the other hand, does not think this question has been answered correctly. In addition, the word "bed room" refers to a literal translation from English ("bedroom"). The question of whether a paranormal explanation is necessary for Gretchen's knowledge is also answered in the negative: "At best, she speaks the language as well as someone who had a year of German lessons twenty years ago."

There are also other points that make you think: Gretchen's information about the city of Eberswalde could not be verified (e.g. there was no mayor with the name Hermann Gottlieb). Even Stevenson thinks what she says about Martin Luther and religious persecution is unrealistic. And the name choice is striking: While "Gretchen" (pronounced / ⁠ gɹiːt͡ʃn̩ ⁠ / ) is a popular first name in the US, he is in Germany actually only the Rufform of "Margaret" When a girl of 16 years, the allegedly Knowledge of one's own name must certainly be assumed, but was not present in Stevenson's Gretchen.

Remarks

  1. ^ Tom Wright: Acts for Everyone , Part 1: Acts 2.5-13. New Words for New News. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) Publishing, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-664-22795-1 : "But there are well-attested instances, in modern as well as ancient times, of people 'speaking in tongues' suddenly, at the spirit's bidding, in particular situations where they have no idea that someone from a particular language and culture is present, and indeed without themselves knowing a single word of that language in the ordinary sense - and discovering that someone present can understand them. I have met people to whom this has happened, and I have no reason to think they were deceiving either themselves or me. "
  2. ↑ without reference to the source. The description of the case follows Stevenson 1984 (or a presentation referring to him)
  3. ↑ Dimension PSI: Background to Part 5 - Rebirth ( Memento from September 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). In: MDR . November 19, 2003
  4. ↑ Thomason 1993, Thomason 2004
  5. ↑ Thomason 1993, p. 67.
  6. ↑ cit. in Thomason 1993, p. 70.
  7. ↑ Thomason 1993, p. 71.
  8. ↑ On the use of “Margarethe” / “Gretchen” cf. Goethe's "Faust"

literature

  • Ian Stevenson: Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case. In: Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research. February 31, 1974 and: University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville 1974
  • Carroll E. Jay: Gretchen, I am. Wyden, New York 1977
  • Ian Stevenson: Unlearned Languages: New Studies in Xenoglossy. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville 1984, ISBN 0-8139-0994-5 .
  • Sarah G. Thomason: Do You Remember Your Previous Life's Language in Your Present Incarnation? In: American Speech. 59, 1984, pp. 340-350.
  • Paul Edwards: The Case Against Reincarnation. In: Free Inquiry. 6 (4 )-7 (3), 1986-1987. (4 parts)
  • Sarah G. Thomason: Past Tongues Remembered. In: Skeptical Inquirer. 11 (4) 1987, pp. 367-375, German: With strange tongues. In: Gero von Randow (Ed.): My paranormal bicycle . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, pp. 65-75.
  • Leonard Angel: Empirical evidence for reincarnation? Examining Stevenson's 'most impressive' case . In: Skeptical Inquirer. 18 (5) 1994, pp. 481-487.
  • Ian Stevenson: Empirical evidence for reincarnation? A response to Leonard Angel. In: Skeptical Inquirer. 19 (3) 1995, pp. 50f.
  • Paul Edwards: Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. Prometheus, Amherst (NY) 1996, ISBN 1-57392-005-3 .
  • Sarah G. Thomason: Xenoglossy. In: Gordon Stein (Ed.): The encyclopedia of the paranormal . Prometheus Books, Amherst NY 1996, ISBN 1-57392-021-5 , pp. 835-844. ( PDF )
  • CJ Ducasse. A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life After Death - Part 5. Chapter 23: Verifications of Ostensible Memories of Earlier Lives
  • Frederic H. Wood. This Egyptian Miracle, Rider & Co., London 1939 / John M. Watkins, London 1955

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Xenoglossia  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations