Recent studies suggest that this phenomenon is not a myth. Here’s how it works.

The experiment:

The experiment involved 50 Germans speaking in Dutch (a language they had recently started studying) with native Dutch speakers. Some of them had washed down a little alcohol, while the control group had had no alcohol in their system. Then the Dutch were asked to rate the language skills of the Germans (without knowing who had consumed alcohol) only to reveal that the booze consumers did much better, especially when it came to pronunciation.

Interestingly, the drunk participants didn’t rate their own speaking as better.

Although the study can’t prove what causes this, its authors presume the secret might be the anxiety-reducing effect of alcohol.

How much alcohol helps?

The experiment found that only a small amount of alcohol is beneficial for your language skills – a pint of beer for a grown-up man (0.5 l/17 oz).

“Higher levels of alcohol consumption might not have beneficial effects on the pronunciation of a foreign language,” comments Dr Fritz Renner, one of the study’s authors. We’ve seen enough drunk people unable to pronounce their own names to believe this speculation.

In conclusion,

a beer or two might help you untie your tongue, but you still have to indulge in some study to get your language skills going. If you want to learn foreign languages for free (who wouldn’t study Japanese for free?), here’s a list of helpful free language websites to give you a flying start without breaking the bank.

Pin this invaluable information for later:

… or share it with your drunk-speaking friends.

The post It’s proven: speaking in a foreign language drunk is easier appeared first on 203Challenges.

What we most enjoy about the times we live in, are the endless opportunities for free education.

If you are one of those people, who are interested in foreign languages, and do not need a teacher’s constant mentoring, or if you want to practice a language you already know, in order not to forget it, we’ve prepared a list of handy language learning websites, which you can use completely free of charge.

It might be best to try a few and figure out for yourself which one you like best.

DuoLingo

With this website, you’d be learning a new language through one you already know. Some of the options include perfecting your writing and comprehension skills, as well as verbal training. Besides, you can hear how the words are pronounced, and translate actual articles from the internet. The website is constantly getting better, and is one of the most useful tools for online language learning. The only downside is that right now there isn’t a huge abundance of languages to choose from, but their numbers are constantly growing.

Omniglot

This website features the basic grammatical rules for hundreds of languages. You can’t count solely on this tool to learn a language, but the introductory articles, for each of the languages, are very helpful. This is also a great place to learn how to pronounce all the letters of the alphabet, in different languages.

BBC

You are going abroad and only need a short list of the most useful phrases? BBC has a list of the key phrases, needed by a tourist. As an added bonus, you can download a file with their pronunciations, and listen to the phrases on your phone or music player, even while you are on your trip.

My Language Exchange

You’d like to practice what you ve learned with a native speaker? This website is where you can join small groups of people, with whom to practice two languages – half of the time is spent helping with your native tongue, and the other half – on the language you d like to learn. This tool is most useful for people who are at an intermediate level.

Interpals

Remember how in school we had pen pals from another country? This tool uses the same principle, but in a modernized way. With the help of this website, you will not only be able to practice the written from of another language, but you’d also meet a bunch of interesting people, some of which may even become your friends one day.

Lang-8

In this website, you can receive a free review of your written work, in another language. The tool relates on its users, who correct each other’s papers. Even though you run the risk of getting a helper who is not the best speller in their native language, papers are usually graded by more than one user, so you can compare the results for yourself.

These days, helping to study is not a privilege but a daily routine. To have time for self-education, you can delegate your work to others, for example, write services with the words write my paper for me and that way, you will get a good grade and learn something new and valuable for yourself.

Don’t forget that languages are very important for your work, future, development. There is no matter in which sphere you work – online business, school, digital agency and SEO optimization, tourism, you have to learn and progress.

The post Free language learning websites that actually work appeared first on 203Challenges.

The team of Dr Peter Dodds from the University of Vermont decided to reveal which are the most positive languages in the world, using scientific methods. The study found out that Spanish can be labeled as the happiest language. But let’s see…

…How the study works

The researchers built a database of billions of words, using online resources such as Google Books, Twitter, subtitles on films and TV shows, song lyrics and the New York Times and the Daily Mail reports.

The languages taking part in the study were Spanish, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, Russian and German. The database was used to comply a list of 10,000 most common words in each language. Afterwards each word was marked as “positive” or “negative” based on its meaning. For example, “death” or “kill” are labeled as negative, while “happiness” or “smile” – as positive.

So far so good. But let’s see…

…What the study revealed

The researchers found that each of the ten languagees studied was inherently positive, and more words fell on the bright side of the centre than on the dark one.

‘The words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation, and this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word use,” the study says.

Here are:

Top 10 happiest languages

1. Spanish

2. Portuguese

3. English

4. Indonesian

5. French

6. German

7. Arabic

8. Russian

9. Korean

10. Chinese

The researchers found that each of the ten languages studied was inherently positive, and more words fell on the bright side of the center than on the dark one. Thankfully, several of these are some of the easier languages to learn so you can get started right away.

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