Glossolalia

- often called speaking in tongues

- from Greek γλωσσολαλιά and that from γλῶσσα - glossa "tongue, language" and λαλεῖν (lalein) "to talk"

Glossolalia is the phenomenon of speaking in an unknown language in religious worship. It is practiced by Pentecostal and charismatic Christians.

In charismatic Christian communities glossolalia is sacred and referred to as ‘speaking in tongues’ or having ‘the gift of tongues’ (because it truly is a gift from God to all of us, we can ‘activate’ it by growing in our faith in God). God has given that gift to every person so he/she can spread out the Word of God to other people.

It is important to know

People who hear 'prayer in tongues' for the first time are often confused and think it is sacrilege (it is not sacrilege). They explain it as making noises that may sound like a language. Those noises are usually a known language (Hebrew, French, Italian, Latin even Chinese, Japanese, etc.). It can literally be any known or unknown language, but a person who has that gift doesn’t know that language (maybe he can recognize which language it is but he can’t translate it).

People are usually asking: “Why is the language unknown to the person who is speaking it?”. The answer is very simple. God gave us an unknown language so we can learn to totally trust God through Holy Spirit ( Trinity ) and surrender to the Love of God. If we trust God than we will see that the ‘prayer in tongues’ is really letting Holy Spirit talk through us and fulfilling us with an enormous amount of blessing and happiness.

First time you talk in tongues (you should never do it alone without discussing with a catholic priest who knows about that special gift) you'll be fulfilled with happiness, but for some people, as the time passes, it gets boring because they don’t know what are they saying. It is hard to pray all the time in ‘tongues’ (and you are not forced to pray all the time, it is just really recommended), but if you do, you receive so much grace and maybe receive some other gifts that will help you help others and will help you grow in awe, loyalty, love, hope and faith in God.

You cannot lose this gift. God won't take away what he gave to us.

The Bible As it says in the Bible that on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and they started speaking in other languages. Other people did understand them (of course, people understood the language if it was their native language or another language they knew) and it was a special way of spreading the glorious Word of God to people that didn't speak the language apostles had spoken.