Anyone who has ever gone away on holiday with a phrasebook and then gotten halfway through a bottle of wine could have told them this, but scientists have actually proved it with some research.
There are plenty of things that alcohol makes us do that are not good (no need to go into too much detail or list things here, but suffice to say the neighbours didn't take kindly to our impromptu concert last weekend, although in our humble opinion we really nailed our impression of the bagpipe solo in John Farnham's 'You're The Voice') but it does lower your inhibitions.
That particular quality, it turns out, is very handy when it comes to speaking a foreign language, even if you're really not all that familiar with it. According to a piece published recently by The Slate, they went back and looked at a few studies that all seem to confirm this fact, but there are some limits.
One such test showed that English-speaking students who were given a few Thai words to pronounce (with no experience in the language) performed better when they had a certain amount of booze on them: "Those who drank 1.5 ounces of alcohol performed better on the pronunciation test than those who had drunk an alcohol-free placebo. An ounce and a half of alcohol was apparently the perfect amount to relax the subjects' egos enough to not feel silly while trying to produce the sounds of a language very different from English".
However, if students drank more than that, they actually got worse again, so 1.5 ounces (more or less a shot) seems to be the magic number. They do add that for some people, the little flutter of nerves and anxiety that comes with speaking a new language is beneficial, as people react differently to pressure and being a bit agitated can help focus you. Keep in mind that when you're five shots deep nothing you say makes sense, no matter what language you think you're speaking.
Via The Slate
