Science Confirms Drinking Alcohol Makes it Easier to Speak a Foreign Language

Alcohol can be quite beneficial to someone who aims to be fluent in a certain language, whether it’s Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch, German or French. A pint of beer or even a glass of wine can lower your inhibitions that, in turn, can help you overcome obstacles like nervousness when speaking to people or hesitation, Time reported.

This is, of course, in moderation. But if went over the limit, alcohol can give someone negative results, particularly in the form of memory and attention problems, and slurred speech to name a few.

In the study, which was conducted by British and Dutch researchers and published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, 50 native German speakers who are studying at Maastricht University in the Netherlands were invited.

They were divided into two groups and were asked to have a casual, two-minute conversation with a native Dutch speaker who acted as their interviewer. But before they began the experiment, the researchers asked one half to drink Pinot Grigio while the other half was only asked to drink a glass of water.

The participants in the experiment were graded by two native Dutch speakers who are not aware which of the students had a drink before the test. They were also asked to self-score their performance.

Those who had consumed alcohol before the interview performed rather well compared to those who didn’t. But it turns out that the beverage did not have any kind of effect in how they assess their own performance during the experiment, according to the published study.

“Acute alcohol consumption may have beneficial effects on the pronunciation of a foreign language in people who have recently learned that language,” the researchers concluded.

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