re satanic tounges pwhite empros com peter white relates a story about a person who gives a message in tongues which consists entirely of the words pu ka he was asked to refrain from doing that well brother puka controlled himself for a while but a few weeks later the church had invited a missionary in to speak at the time of the meeting where tongues and interpretation were appropriate who should arise to speak but brother puka and off he went as before all the words were puka the pastor was about to apologize for this embarrassment when the missionary arose to speak saying that he was sorry that he did not have the interpretation but that he could give the translation in a tribe where he had worked they only had one word in the language puka meaning was derived from the inflection and other voice qualities brother puka had given a perfectly inflected and reasonable message nice story but it sets off my urban legend or is it charismatic legend alarms can the linguists on the net identify the language from the description or can they even attest that such a language exists it seems to be odd enough at least by the standards of european languages that if it exists it should be reasonably well known to linguists as an extreme case of something or other or have i just overreacted to your basic shaggy dog story will william taber will taber dg com any opinions expressed data general corp will futon webo dg com are mine alone and may westboro mass change without notice when all your dreams are laid to rest you can get what s second best but it s hard to get enough david wilcox
