Does Alcohol Promotes the Ability of Speaking a Foregin Language?
In today’s society, alcohol is usually perceived only in a negative way as being unhealthy and stimulant to people. However, in my opinion, there are potential benefits brought by alcohol that we need to acknowledge which are associated with our oral language. When people get drunk, loads of them spontaneously switch to speak another foreign language and in a more fluent and proficient way. Referring to my own experience, I got drunk at my 18th birthday last year. When we were supposed to take the elevator and go out, I leaned on the chair and encountered difficulties to stand up again. At that time, the only language left in head is not Chinese but English. It felt like my head was automatically converted to English and I could not come up with a single Chinese word. When my friends tried talking to me in Chinese, I understood their words but everytime when I responded, the language that instantly flowed out from my mouth was English. It felt more natural than ever before to speak in this foreign language. What was even more astonishing was that I spoke English in a much more fluent way and with the least accents comparing to how I speak when I am sober. Therefore, I wonder if alcohol has the potential to trigger one’s ability in excel in an exotic language.
It turns out that I am indeed not the only one in the world who encounters such an occasion. According to the article “It’s True: Alcohol Helps You Speak a Foreign Language Better” from Time, Amanda Macmillan states that people can speak a foreign language better especially concerning fluency and pronunciation within a limited amount of alcohol input. Based on the experimental result that Macmillan mentions in her article, the 50 german-speaking students have consumed either water or alcohol before an oral conversation of Dutch, and the result demonstrates that students who generally perform better in fluency and pronunciation are the ones who drank alcohol instead of water. Yet at the same time, their language skills in vocabulary, grammar, or contention remain the same as before (Macmillan). This is because alcohol only promotes people to speak more boldly and forthright by stimulating their nerves, while it cannot improve one’s language ability from the fundamental basis. It is not the magic key to unfold the hidden dictionary inside one’s brain, because there does not even exist such a thing. When people are excited, they are less worried about making mistakes and being laughed at. As a result, people can express their ideas and organize their words in a more free and comfortable way. Then this leads to an apparent improvement on fluency and pronunciation. Undoubtedly, if an excessive amount of alcohol is consumed, the consequence would be opposite because people would then face difficulties with speaking.
In conclusion, the effects of alcohol have been illustrated to be obvious. Alcohol can enhance a person’s capability in speaking a foreign language more fluently and pronouncing more accurately due to the courage which alcohol brings about. If we can take advantage of its benefits properly, then we can approach to maximize our potential in languge-speaking.
