Can Your Language Influence Your Spending, Eating, and Smoking Habits?

[BridgeTheGap]

Yes, I know. That headline. It looks like the most egregious form of causal inference. Americans don't save money because of ... our grammar? How utterly absurd. But bear with me.

In the 1930s, linguists proposed that the way we read, write, and talk helped to determine the way we see the world. Speakers of languages that had the same word for orange and yellow had a harder time actually distinguishing the colors. Speakers of the Kook Thaayorre language, which has no words for left and right, must orient themselves by north, south, east, and west at all time, which enhances their awareness of geographical and astronomical markers.

Last year, economist Keith Chen released a working paper (now published) suggesting speakers of languages without strong future tenses tended to be more responsible about planning for the future. Quick example. In English, we say "I will go to the play tomorrow." That's strong future tense. In Mandarin or Finnish, which have weaker future tenses, it might be more appropriate to say, "I go to the play tomorrow."

Chen wondered whether languages with weak future tenses would be more thoughtful about the future because they consider it, grammatically, equivalent to the present. He mapped stronger and weak future-tense languages across Europe and correlated the data with future-oriented behaviors like saving, smoking, and using condoms.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/can-your-language-influence-your-spending-eating-and-smoking-habits/279484/

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

1. Interesting.

This is really rather interesting. I am lest wondering where my landlord's future tense of, "Yeah, I gotta get around to that, one of these days," fits into the general scheme of things. But... it is interesting.