Thanks to a new study, it looks like there may be a grain of truth to “Dutch courage” after all: a moderate amount of alcohol may actually improve your Dutch pronunciation. (If you’re German, that is!)
Researchers from the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany have received the 2025 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for their paper on the effects of alcohol consumption on foreign language skills.
Dubbed the awards that honour “achievements so surprising that they make people LAUGH, then THINK”, the Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate quirky research, from how wombats poo in cubes to whether cats can be considered both a liquid and a solid.
READ MORE | Ovens, uncles, and courage: English expressions with the word “Dutch”
But, wombats and cats aside, what’s the scoop on Dutch courage?
Drunk Germans, alcohol, and language research
The study was the brainchild of four university researchers: Maastricht’s Fritz Renner, Freiburg’s Jessica Werthmann, and Inge Kersbergen and Matt Field from the University of Liverpool.
Fifty native German speakers, who’d recently learnt some Dutch, were wrangled to be the study’s guinea pigs.
One lucky half was given a “low dose” of alcohol, and the other received a “control beverage” that contained no alcohol.
Once the respective groups had guzzled their drinks, each participant took part in a Dutch discussion with an experimenter. The audio recordings of these discussions were then judged by two native Dutch speakers.
The result? German participants who’d consumed some alcohol had significantly better ratings for their Dutch pronunciation.
So, will a beer help me speak vloeiend Nederlands?
Helaas, a few beers aren’t likely to make you a cunning linguist overnight if you’re starting from level zero.
Based on the conclusion, the alcohol’s effects were primarily on pronunciation skills, and all the participants had some knowledge of Dutch beforehand.
So, if you haven’t got the vocabulary to back up your alcohol-enhanced Nederlands, you may be better off signing up for some Dutch classes rather than heading off to the nearest bar.
Want the latest Dutch news to come zooming through the internet to your inbox? Dat kan! Subscribe to DutchReview’s weekly roundup 📮
