Ever take a sip of a cocktail and get a sudden surge in courage to finally practice that language you’ve been attempting to learn on Duolingo for a 147-day streak? According to an award-winning study out of the University of Bath and the University of Freiburgthat little tipple really can make you slightly more fluent.

In September, the scientific magazine Annals of Improbable Research celebrated its annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, which honors “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” The awards are a mix of silly and serious. As the magazine noted, it’s critical to highlight seemingly lighthearted studies because “a lot of good science gets attacked because of its absurdity. A lot of bad science gets revered despite its absurdity.”

The awards, created in 1991 by American mathematician and researcher Marc Abrahams, are presented in person each year at prestigious institutions such as MIT and Harvard by Nobel Laureates. The winners are given 60 seconds to explain their work, which most do through skits and songs. However, things get more serious the following day when the winners come together for an informal salon, where they can ask one another questions about their research and give small lectures.

At this year’s event, researchers Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann were awarded an Ig Nobel Peace Prize for their study on “Dutch Courage,” which investigated whether small sips of alcohol could really improve one’s pronunciation in a foreign language.

The study followed 50 German speakers who had recently learned Dutch. The researchers asked the group to have a short, standardized conversation in their second language, with some consuming a small amount of alcohol and others sipping a non-alcoholic beverage. The researchers recorded the conversations and had them evaluated by native Dutch speakers, as noted in a statement from the University of Freiburg.

The analysis revealed that those who had imbibed indeed had better pronunciation skills in Dutch than those who did not.

Still, Werthmann noted that more work would be needed to validate the findings across other languages, so take it with a grain of salt. “Our results suggest that moderate alcohol consumption can reduce inhibitions when speaking a foreign language and lead to more fluent pronunciation, although these findings only apply to German students who spoke Dutch and therefore cannot be generalised,” Werthmann said.

Next time you practice your Japanese, try pairing it with a nice sake — or go for a bold Burgundy with your French, or a Green wine with your Portuguese. It could help you unlock a new level of fluency even faster.