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Xenoglossy

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This article is about the knowledge of a language one hasn't learned. For "speaking in tongues", see Glossolalia. For the anime series, see Idolmaster: Xenoglossia.

Xenoglossy (/ˈziːn[invalid input: 'ɵ']ɡlɒsi/ or /ˈzɛn[invalid input: 'ɵ']ɡlɒsi/), also written xenoglossia (/ziːn[invalid input: 'ɵ']ˈɡlɒsiə/ or /zɛn[invalid input: 'ɵ']ˈɡlɒsiə/), is the putative paranormal phenomenon in which a person is able to speak or write a language he or she could not have acquired by natural means. For example, a person who speaks Swedish fluently, but who is not a native Swedish speaker, has never studied Swedish, never been to a Swedish-speaking country, and never associated with Swedish speakers or had any other source of exposure to the Swedish language, would be said to exhibit xenoglossy. The existence of xenoglossy is not generally accepted by skeptic linguists such as Samarin [1] and Thomason.[2][3][4][5] However, psychiatrist and paranormal researcher Ian Stevenson, from University of Virginia, documented several cases that he considered authentic (Stevenson, 2001). The words derive from Greek ξένος (xenos), "foreigner"[6] and γλῶσσα (glōssa), "tongue" or "language".[7] The term xenoglossy was ostensibly coined by French parapsychologist Charles Richet.

History

Stories of the miraculous abilities of certain individuals to read, write, speak, or understand a foreign language that appear in the Bible and other Christian religious literature went on to inspire similar accounts and stories during the Middle Ages.[8] Claims of mediums speaking foreign languages were made by Spiritualists in the 19th century, as well as by Pentacostals in the 20th century, but these did not hold up to scientific scrutiny. More recent claims of xenoglossy have come from reincarnation researchers who have alleged that individuals were able to recall a language spoken in a past life.[3] Some reports of xenoglossy have surfaced in the popular press, such as Czech speedway rider Matěj Kůs who in September 2007 supposedly awoke after a crash and was able to converse in perfect English; however press reports of his fluency in English were based entirely on anecdotal stories told by his Czech team-mates.[9][10]

Cases subjected to scientific investigation

Scientific research into xenoglossy is quite rare. Ian Stevenson, a parapsychologist and psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, claimed there were just a handful of suggestive cases. These included two hypnotic regression cases where the subject could converse with people speaking the foreign language, instead of merely being able to recite foreign words. Sarah Thomason, a linguist at the University of Michigan, reanalysed these cases, concluding that "the linguistic evidence is too weak to provide support for the claims of xenoglossy".[2]

Swarnlatta Mishra case[11]

A girl in India who lived entirely among Hindi-speaking people but was able to sing songs in Bengali, as identified by Professor P. Pal of Itachuna College in West Bengal, who studied the case after Professor Stevenson and transcribed some of the songs.

Sharada case[12]

Uttara Huddar was a woman in India who normally spoke Marathi. While in the hospital undergoing psychiatric treatment, she began manifesting a personality called Sharada, who spoke in Bengali. Stevenson had recordings analysed by Bengali speakers and had some of the Bengali speakers directly talk to Uttara in Bengali. Most of them (6 out of 8) agreed about the subject's fluency in Bengali.[13] It cannot be ruled out that the subject may have learned Bengali earlier in life-however, there is no direct evidence to support this. Both she and her father had a long-standing interest in Bengal, and her home city had 1% native Bengali speakers. However, according to Uttara's family they have never traveled to Bengal and never had Bengali-speaking friends and neighbors. Uttara had read Bengali novels in translation but never received lessons in Bengali. She had taken lessons in reading Sanskrit, which is totally different from the modern Bengali she fluently spoke.[14]

Jensen case[2][15]

an American woman who presented the character of a Swedish farmer while under hypnosis conducted by her physician husband. Stevenson reported that the subject was able to converse in Swedish, albeit not fluently. However, Thomason's reanalysis concluded that Jensen could not convincingly be claimed to speak Swedish; in the interview Stevenson studied in depth, though Jensen had a total vocabulary of about 100 words, only about 60 were used before interlocutors used them, and, as one of Stevenson's consultants pointed out, this reduced to 31 after eliminating cognates. Jensen also gave no complex sentences, mostly gave one or two word answers, and – as acknowledged by Stevenson – the subject's poor pronunciation was covered by correct spelling in the transcripts. Thomason mentions, however, that two of Stevenson's consultants praised Jensen's Swedish accent, and one claimed that only a native speaker could pronounce the word 'seven' correctly as Jensen does. Furthermore, she says that Stevenson's efforts to rule out fraud are convincing. Jensen's lack of understanding of Swedish was such that he answers ‘my wife’ to a question about what he would pay for some item at the market.[2][16] Linguist William Samarin drew the same conclusion as Thomason.

Gretchen case[2][12]

an American woman named Dolores Jay who presented the life of a teenage girl in Germany while hypnotized by her Methodist minister husband. Stevenson reported that the subject was able to converse in German. Mrs. Jay did study a German dictionary at one point during the sessions, but Stevenson pointed out that she had already spontaneously produced 206 words before this event. Again Thomason's reanalysis, while acknowledging that the evidence against fraud was convincing, concluded that Gretchen could not converse fluently in German. Her speech was largely the repetition of German questions with different intonation, or utterances of one or two words. Her "German vocabulary is minute, and her pronunciation is spotty".[2] Only in a few occasions Gretchen could make small sentences more than two words such as "I help the housekeeper".[17] When asked what she had for breakfast, she answers ‘Bettzimmer’, which is a non-existent word made up of the two words for 'bed' and 'room'.[2] On rare occasions, Gretchen answers the question correctly but only with a few words. For example when she is asked what kind of fruit she eats, she answers ‘Der Apfel’ which means ‘the apple’. Or in another occasion when she is asked if she is ready to talk with the speaker's friend (Sind Sie nun bereit, mit meiner Freundin zu besprechen? Ja?), she relies `ich versuche` which means 'I will try'.[17] It seems the subject understands the meaning of the majority of questions put to her in German; however her answers are relatively short.[12] Moreover Thomason points out that she had some previous exposure to German in TV programs and a look at a German book.[2]

Rosemary case

In 1931 a young girl from Blackpool, England began to speak in an ancient Egyptian dialect. She claimed to be under the influence of the personality of Babylonian princess and Pharaoh Amenhotep III's wife Telika-Ventiu, who supposedly lived about 3,300 years ago. Rosemary stated that she "hears" the Egyptian words clairaudiently and repeated them aloud. During more than a thousand language tests, the girl had spoken some 5,000 phrases and short sentences in the old Egyptian language. They were recorded phonetically and the first 800 of them were later identified and translated by an Egyptologist, Mr. Hulme.[18] He claimed that Rosemary's speech substantially and consistently conformed to what Egyptologists know today of the ancient Egyptian tongue. Three books on the Rosemary case have been published and two gramophone discs of xenoglossy have been recorded. Wood claimed that Rosemary was never tested by independent witnesses and the claims were not submitted to independent scholarly inquiry.[19]
However, in the June 1937 issue of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Battiscombe Gunn claimed that Hulme had manipulated the transcriptions to fit his own expectations of what he imagined ancient Egyptian to sound like. A later examination by John D. Ray (the current Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge) confirmed "there could be no mistaking Hulme's incompetence".[20] Furthermore, both Ray and Gunn pointed out that Rosemary's visions of camels as domestic transport were inconsistent, as camels were not used for transport in 18th Dynasty Egypt.[21][citation needed]

Lucía case

In 1933 a 15-year-old well-educated Hungarian girl, Iris Farczády, who had dabbled extensively in mediumship, suddenly underwent a drastic personality change, claiming to be reborn Lucía, a 41-year-old Spanish working woman said by her to have died earlier that year. Transformed into 'Lucía', Iris spoke thereafter in fluent Spanish, a language she had apparently never learnt or had the opportunity to acquire, and could not understand any other language. 'Lucía' has remained Farczády's persona ever since and, aged 86 in 2005, still considered Iris to have been a different person, who ceased to exist in 1933. [22]
The psychologist David Lester also evaluated Stevenson's cases and wrote the subjects made grammatical mistakes, mispronounced words and did not show a wide vocabulary of words in foreign language; thus cannot be considered evidence for xenoglossy.[23]

Alfred Hume case of Blackpool, UK

In 1931, Alfred Hume, a self-proclaimed Egyptologist with an interest in Spiritualism investigated a young girl from Blackpool, England who claimed to be under the influence of the personality of Babylonian princess. Hume was convinced she spoke in an ancient Egyptian dialect. However, in the June 1937 issue of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, English Egyptologist and philologist Battiscombe Gunn wrote that Hume had manipulated the transcriptions to fit his own expectations of what he imagined ancient Egyptian to sound like. A later examination by John D. Ray (the current Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge) confirmed "there could be no mistaking Hume's incompetence".[24]

Unsubstantiated cases

Proper scientific investigation of reports of xenoglossy is rare. More typical are press reports like that of Czech speedway rider Matěj Kůs from Pilsen, who, in September 2007 at the age of 18 reportedly awoke after a crash and was able to converse in perfect English. His ability did not last long and he was unable to remember anything from this episode. The press reports of his fluency in English are based entirely on the reports of his Czech team-mates. There is no record of his allegedly fluent speech or report by a skilled English speaker.[25][26]

See also

References

  1. ^ Samarin, William J. 1976. Review of Ian Stevenson Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case. Language, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 270-274, Published by: Linguistic Society of America, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/413229
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Thomason, Sarah. "Xenoglossy". In Gordon Stein. (1996). The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-021-5 Cite error: The named reference "www-personal.umich.edu" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Melton, J. Gordon (1 January 2007), The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena, Visible Ink Press, pp. 359–, ISBN 978-1-57859-209-8 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laydate=, |authormask=, and |laysummary= (help)
  4. ^ Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 145-146. ISBN 978-0-805-80507-9
  5. ^ Hines, Terence. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 109. ISBN 1-57392-979-4
  6. ^ ξένος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  7. ^ γλῶσσα, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  8. ^ Christine F. Cooper-Rompato (30 April 2011), The Gift of Tongues: Women's Xenoglossia in the Later Middle Ages, Penn State Press, ISBN 0-271-03615-X {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laydate=, |laysummary=, and |authormask= (help)
  9. ^ Czech speedway rider knocked out in crash wakes up speaking perfect English | the Daily Mail
  10. ^ Crash Victim Wakes Up Speaking English
  11. ^ Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation
  12. ^ a b c Stevenson, Ian. 1984. Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy
  13. ^ Stevenson, Ian. 1984. Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy, pp76-80
  14. ^ Stevenson, Ian. 1984. Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy, pp81,137,143,139,4
  15. ^ Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case
  16. ^ 'Xenoglossy' in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal
  17. ^ a b Stevenson, Ian. 1984. Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy, p171, p181, p191
  18. ^ C. J. Ducasse. A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life After Death – Part 5. Chapter 23: Verifications of Ostensible Memories of Earlier Lives
  19. ^ Frederic H. Wood. Egyptian Miracle
  20. ^ Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick. Past Lives – an investigation into reincarnation memories. Berkley Books – Penguin Books, New York, 1999. ISBN 978-1-1012-0390-3   [1]
  21. ^ Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick. Past Lives – an investigation into reincarnation memories. Berkley Books – Penguin Books, New York, 1999. ISBN 978-1-1012-0390-3   [2]
  22. ^ Mary Rose Barrington, Peter Mulacz and Titus Rivas, The case of Iris Farczády - A stolen life, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume69.2, Number 879, pp. 49--77, April 2005 http://www.txtxs.nl/artikel.asp?artid=738
  23. ^ Lester, David. (2005). Is There Life After Death? An Examination of the Empirical Evidence. McFarland. pp. 123-131. ISBN 978-0786421169
  24. ^ Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick. Past Lives – an investigation into reincarnation memories. Berkley Books – Penguin Books, New York, 1999. ISBN 978-1-1012-0390-3   [3]
  25. ^ Czech speedway rider knocked out in crash wakes up speaking perfect English | the Daily Mail
  26. ^ Crash Victim Wakes Up Speaking English

Bibliography

  • Cooper-Rompato, Christine F. (2010). The Gift of Tongues: Women's Xenoglossia in the Later Middle Ages. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-03615-X
  • Stevenson, Ian. (1966). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. (Second revised and enlarged edition 1974). University of Virginia Press. ISBN 0-8139-0872-8
  • Stevenson, Ian. (1974). Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case. Charlotte: University Press of Virginia.
  • Stevenson, Ian. (1984). Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 0-8139-0994-5
  • Stevenson, Ian. (2001). Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Quest of Reincarnation. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-0913-4
  • Thomason, Sarah G.. (1984). Do you Remember Your Previous Life's Language in Your Present Incarnation?. American Speech 59: 340-350.
  • Thomason, Sarah G.. (1987). Past Tongues Remembered?. The Skeptical Inquirer 11: 367-75.
  • Thomason, Sarah G.. "Xenoglossy". In Gordon Stein. (1996). The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-021-5
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