Standing in formation for roll call on a cold Berlin morning is an unlikely time for a supernatural manifestation. But, who knows?

In the military, the drive for  crispness in giving commands produces a variety of sounds which could charitably be called "humanoid barking".  For example , "Attention" becomes "ten-hut!" Now, elocution, electrocution, who cares; how many times did you not snap to, continuing to slouch there with your hands in your pockets and say, "Gee, sarge, don't the regulations require you to say 'Attention!'"?
Sure.

Our local company dialect of "All present or accounted for!" usually came out something like, "Aaw-prehcowfaw!"  A few days earlier, however, my dear friend, Preston, in what he later  assured us was a slip of the  tongue, had said, quite distinctly, "All present or absent!", starting a noble roll-call  tradition of oneupsmanship:When it's your turn, be a smart-ass.

Now it was my turn and I had  racked my brain till cheery postcards from Amnesty International started to roll in, but it wasn't talking. Nothing. Then,  I opened my mouth and it happened— the experience I mentioned. I said: "Akul plab don fuh!" Akul plab don fuh? I was speaking in tongues!  Sarge left me alone for the rest of the day, I think  because I reminded him of the film  earlier that week at the base
theater: The Day the Earth Stood Still. Science Fiction fans will recall that a nonsense phrase, "kla-atu barada nikto," was  mysteriosly linked to the impressively destructive powers of a robot —Glog, Gork, Something—  (I can't believe it: I've finally forgotten  a totally useless fact!). Sarge was taking no chances that a hole in my forehead, too, would open  and  a microwave death ray  zap out and french-fry him  to his ancestors.

Technically,  speaking in tongues  is called glossolalia:  the uttering of unintelligble speechlike sounds produced in a state of religious exaltation. It is mentioned in the New Testament,  notably in  Mark 16: 18: "In my name… they shall speak with new tongues…" . However, there is also mention of Old Testament Hebrew prophets speaking in tongues, and the phenomenon was  found among Greek and Roman oracles, as well. Today, it exists among the so-called "Whirling Dervishes" in Islamic Sufism and, in Christianity, glossolalia figures prominently in Pentacostal Protestantism and charismatic Roman Catholicism. Generally speaking, such utterances are simpler and more repetitive than "real" languages. Glossolalia is viewed by those who experience it as a very emotional and meaningful event, and by disinterested linguists as a kind of "pseudo-language," on the order of "scat-singing" in jazz or Walt Disney's, "salagadoola, mitchagaboola, bibbidy-bobbidy-boo".

It shouldn't be confused with "secret languages," such as Igpay Atinlay, or Cockney Rhyming Slang, in which, for example, "take a butcher's" means, "take a look," because "look" rhymes with "butcher's hook"!  Nor is it the same as well thought out nonsense language, which  in structure and sound  is virtually the same as natural language. The best-known example of this is probably  Lewis Carrol's "Jabberwocky":

" 'T was brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe."

Maybe I'll never know what came over me that morning. I don't recall any special feeling of grace or exaltation.  (Pretty much true of my entire tenure as a Spec 4, really).  But it has not left me alone all these years: "Akul plab don fuh !"  It is clearly not xenoglossolalia, the miraculous speaking of a known language, but one which you have never learned and could not possibly know.  My sources tell me that "akul plab don fuh" means nothing anywhere on earth. I could be an extraterrestrial, but that would be difficult to prove. Maybe.

I once thought it was happening again around here,too.  I dialed a  number on our local militay base and  heard someone say: "Navscormavstriksmormed!" This, I later found out, was Natoglossolalia, a special, but not particularly  beatific form of expression.

Ecstacy aside, glossolalia might come in handy; they say you can practice and get good at it. Think how much more satisfying it would be during a traffic show-down, when that oncoming car turns left in front of you and cuts you off, to be able to watch his face as you yell out the window something like "Gadardle bleng tommit sidim!" instead of a common "Up yours, Jack!"