What did it mean to speak in tongues?

While reading Acts, I had a lot of questions, but the thing that stood out the most to me was in Acts 2. Now, don't get me wrong, I have heard of speaking in tongues, mainly because my brother & sister-in-law attend a Church of God and my brother has told me some stories about people speaking in tongues. As I had not looked any further into the whole speaking in tongues thing, mainly because growing up, we attended a non-denominational church sometimes and the whole speaking in tongues thing wasn't happening. So, coming across this reference to speaking in tongues in Acts 2 had me interested.It made me curious, therefore, my question is, what did it really mean to speak in tongues?


During my research, I found a lot of information from Corinthians, but alas, that is not the book I am writing about this week, so I am focusing solely on what it meant to speak in tongues based on the information given to us in the Book of Acts. Acts 2:4 states, "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." So, without reading any further, what does this mean? Before reading this and researching it, (side note-I am certainly not judging or being crass when I say this), I thought (and again, this was before reading and researching), that speaking in tongues was literally the Holy Ghost got in someone and that they started babbling unintelligibly. I know, that is probably horrible of me to think, but honestly, what else was I supposed to think? I hear, "speaking in tongues" and I think someone basically babbling. (another side-note-If I offended anyone, I deeply apologize). Therefore, the reference to speaking in tongues in Acts had me enamored. I, like I said above, never thought of it as something that others could interpret(besides one or two in the congregation), and I never thought of it as something that was helpful to others. In researching, I of course, was proven wrong, at least that's what I now believe. 

Acts 2:5-8 describes the speaking of tongues in a way I never even imagined; "Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?" I never looked at it this way, I never had to read the whole New Testament either though. If we read these verses and take them for exactly what they say, it says that speaking in tongues is not in fact the "babble" I thought it was, it is speaking in other languages that one did not know that they could speak. According to House to House, my thoughts are confirmed. This website states that speaking in tongues essentially means for someone to speak in an understandable and established language. This source goes on to say that speaking in tongues, in our modern days, is generally a misused and misunderstood statement, because what is in fact happening when people "speak in tongues" today, they are really referring to "ecstatic utterances made after" contact with the Holy Spirit. Also according to this website, speaking in tongues is generally stating that the apostles could speak in more than one foreign language. Another website, Got Questions, also confirms that "the gift of tongues is speaking in a language a person does not know in order to minister to someone who does speak that language."

Therefore, according to most websites, articles, etc., the speaking of tongues as described in the Book of Acts is a spontaneous speaking of another language. In an academic article that I found, The Philosophy of Speaking in Tongues, I found that the speaking of tongues in Acts, is called Glossolalia, which literally means the act of speaking in a language other than the one that the person is aware that they can speak. It seems that most people come to agreement that speaking in tongues, according to Acts, was speaking in understandable languages to people who needed to hear the word.