alcohol and language

perhaps i'll try and document my brief history later; right now i just have some ruminations on the effect of alcohol on one's ability to speak a foreign language. this came up today during a tour of paris' passages (the very narrow/covered streets left over from before hausmann opened up broad avenues through paris) with my animateur Raphael and a few other students. in his case, it was about speaking english, but it works the same: alcohol substantially helps people speak foreign languages better. he claimed that he needed substantial amounts to speak english well. in my experience, 2-3 glasses of wine makes communicating with my host family much more pleasant. it takes me from sitting and listening during dinner to actually taking part a little more in the conversation.

for me, this raises two questions:

1. to what extent does alcohol help? despite what raphael claims, i don't really believe a keg will help anyone speak a foreign language. obviously the precisely most helpful amount depends on the person and their abilities an inhibitions, but finding the most helpful amount may be difficult to find, because your judgment of your own abilities is doubtlessly somewhat impaired with alcohol.

2. is this dependent on personality? both raphael and i are somewhat reserved. is this effect the same as the overcoming of ordinary inhibitions, or is it in any way specialized to foreign languages? i feel like it may be actually different, but i suppose people's ordinary vs. foreign language inhibitions are also different.

essentially, this is just a reinforcement of something not unusual: that when speaking a foreign language, one must be confident and unafraid to make mistakes if one wants to get better.

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hmph. this is not as exciting as i'd hoped. i promise to write something better later.