Ig Nobel prize for study showing that drunk Germans speak Dutch better than sober ones
Dutch Courage can help you speak a foreign language, according to a study by Dutch, English, and German researchers that was awarded an Ig Nobel prize on Thursday. They showed that alcohol consumption sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language. “We made an important discovery. Drunk Germans usually pronounce Dutch better than sober Germans.”
“It started with colleagues from different countries speaking different languages and sometimes joking, ‘I swear I speak better Dutch after a glass of wine.’ Rather than leaving it at that, we decided to test it properly,” the researchers said in their acceptance speech, read on their behalf by Svante Pääbo, a Swedish genetic scientist who won the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
The study won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize. Researchers Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann had 50 German students who also spoke Dutch converse with a native Dutch speaker. Some had drunk water, and the others had a glass of vodka and soda. The researchers found that “a low dose” of alcohol, in this case, less than what is found in a pint of beer, made people believe that their own spoken Dutch was improved. And the independent reviewers agreed that pronunciation was indeed clearer.
According to the researchers, increased self-confidence after drinking alcohol, often called Dutch Courage, played a role here. But it is also that the alcohol reduced the speaker’s anxiety of sounding silly when speaking a foreign language. The benefits stopped with the lower dose, the researchers stressed. “In short, a small sip seemed to boost confidence without making the words fall apart,” said Nobel Prize winner Robert Merton, who also read the Maastricht researchers’ speech.
“Now, before anyone rushes to claim language lessons as tax-deductible bar bills, let us stress we do not recommend alcohol as a tool to learn a new language. At higher doses, it seriously impairs memory, attention, and behavior, the very skills you need to learn a language and frankly to function in everyday life.”
The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded every year to studies that may seem silly, but address a serious issue - research that “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.” Last year, Dutch researchers won Ig Nobel prizes for proving that a coin flip wasn’t 50-50 and for racing drunk and sober worms to study the separation of active polymers.
Other winners this year include Japanese researchers who won the Biology Prize by showing that cows painted with zebra stripes had fewer biting flies bothering them. And researchers from Nigeria, Togo, Italy, and France won the Nutrition prize for a study showing that rainbow lizards prefer four-cheese pizza.
