Alcohol improves foreign language pronunciation, Ig Nobel Prize finds

A study suggesting that a small amount of alcohol can improve foreign-language pronunciation has won an Ig Nobel Prize, the spoof science award that honors research that makes people laugh and think. In the experiment, 50 native German speakers who had recently learned Dutch participated in conversational tasks after consuming either a low dose of alcohol or a non-alcoholic beverage. The researchers report that participants who drank alcohol were rated as having better Dutch pronunciation, a finding they attribute to reduced language anxiety and increased willingness to experiment with sounds. The team notes that the results point to a potential link between modest alcohol intake and comfort with producing unfamiliar phonemes, though they caution that the study is exploratory and not a prescription for language learning. Dr Inge Kersbergen, the study’s first author, emphasizes the playful yet methodical approach behind the work and its broader implications for understanding how mood can influence language performance.

The results were recognized with the Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year, which celebrates research that makes people laugh and then think. The prize’s organizers describe Ig Nobel projects as those that trigger curiosity, challenge assumptions, and highlight how curiosity can lead to surprising insights about human behavior. "We're delighted that this playful piece of research has received such recognition," Kersbergen said. "The Ig Nobel Prize reminds us that science can be both serious and fun and sometimes the light-hearted questions open up surprising insights into human behaviour." The recognition underscores how an ostensibly trivial question can spark discussion about anxiety, social dynamics, and how people perform under pressure in real-world communication.

Beyond the language study, the Ig Nobel lineup this year highlighted a raft of quirky investigations across disciplines. The 2025 slate includes Fingernail growth speed, a long-running observational project that tracks how nails grow with age; Intelligence and narcissists, a study that examines how telling people they are intelligent can affect self-perception and behavior; Lizards' pizza preference, which analyzes how land-dwelling reptiles respond to different pizza offerings at a seaside resort in West Africa; Nursing mothers and garlic, which explored whether a garlicky diet changes a breastfeeding infant’s milk odor and feeding behavior; Cows painted with zebra-stripes, a livestock study that tested whether striping reduces biting flies; The Teflon diet, which investigates whether ingesting PTFE can alter satiety and perceived fullness; Alcohol for speaking a foreign language, the very study that linked alcohol to improved pronunciation in Dutch; Impact of smelly shoes, a design-oriented look at how odor impacts the usability of shoe storage; Flying ability of drunken bats, which assessed whether ethanol ingestion impairs flight and echolocation in fruit bats; and Physics of pasta sauce, a look at how phase changes and clumping can affect the cooking experience of a familiar Italian classic.

The Ig Nobel Prizes, presented annually by the Annals of Improbable Research, are meant to honor discoveries that first provoke laughter and then provoke thought. Established in 1991, the awards parody the Nobel Prize while highlighting research that can entertain yet illuminate unexpected aspects of the natural world. The ceremony typically brings Nobel laureates to Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre to announce winners and share some lighthearted moments, including the tradition of paper planes launched toward the stage. The emphasis remains on curiosity-driven inquiry that challenges convention by asking unusual questions and exploring the boundaries of what counts as scientific inquiry.

While the language study’s tone is humorous, its inclusion in the Ig Nobel lineup reinforces a broader point: science often progresses at the intersection of rigor and play. The lead finding—that a modest amount of alcohol might ease the nerves associated with speaking a foreign language and thereby improve pronunciation—reads alongside more somber work on language acquisition, cognitive load, and anxiety management. In doing so, the Ig Nobel catalog of 2025 reminds readers that curiosity, even when it veers into the whimsical, can illuminate ordinary human experiences in unexpected ways. The event and its speakers emphasize that research can be both entertaining and instructive, encouraging the public to see science as a spectrum that includes both practical applications and provocative questions whose answers may be surprising, humorous, or transformative in ways not initially anticipated.