Dutch courage may really help when it comes to speaking a foreign language, according to this year’s Ig Nobel Prize winner.
Researchers at the University of Bath found that students were better at speaking a foreign language after enjoying an alcoholic drink.
Dr Inge Kersbergen, who co-authored the study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, asked 50 German students to chat in their new tongue after drinking either water or a small vodka and lemon.
Native Dutch speakers, who did not know who had drunk what, rated those who had enjoyed a tipple significantly more fluent than those who had abstained.
The vodka drinkers had smoother pronunciation and researchers suspect this is because they had lower levels of anxiety, allowing them to speak more freely.
But Dr Kersbergen stresses it doesn’t mean drinking shots will help students pass exams.
The students were given the equivalent amount of alcohol as drinking a glass of wine, but it could also have an undesired effect on language abilities.
“While our study highlights how a small amount of alcohol may reduce language anxiety, I would not recommend that anyone use alcohol to improve their fluency in a second language,” Dr Kersbergen told The Times.
“To me, the real takeaway is how complex and fascinating the psychological processes are that support communication in a second language.”
The Ig Nobel prizes, given every September, honour quirky scientific achievements that first “make people laugh, then think”.
It is organised annually by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, and this year’s winners were awarded the prize at a ceremony held at Boston University on Thursday.
Overall, studies from 10 categories were awarded the Ig Nobel this year, including research into cooking the perfect pasta sauce and another probing fingernail growth for decades.
In the physics category, this year’s winner was an international team of researchers from Austria, Italy, Germany and Spain who cracked the mystery of crafting the perfect cacio e pepe pasta – an iconic Italian dish celebrated for its simplicity.
The chemistry prize was awarded to researchers who investigated whether eating powdered Teflon (PTFE), the chemical coating of non-stick pans, could be used to boost food volume and satiety without adding extra calories.
Another team from Japan was awarded the Nobel Prize parody for finding that Japanese beef cows spray-painted with white stripes attracted fewer flies.
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