[Vision2020] Why speaking English can make you poor when you retire

[Kenneth Marcy]

Why speaking English can make you poor when you retire

Not all languages require the use of a future tense

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574

Could the language we speak skew our financial decision-making, and does 
the fact that you're reading this in English make you less likely than a 
Mandarin speaker to save for your old age?

It is a controversial theory which has been given some weight by new 
findings from a Yale University behavioural economist, Keith Chen.

Prof Chen says his research proves that the grammar of the language we 
speak affects both our finances and our health.

Bluntly, he says, if you speak English you are likely to save less for 
your old age, smoke more and get less exercise than if you speak a 
language like Mandarin, Yoruba or Malay.

Future-speak

Prof Chen divides the world's languages into two groups, depending on 
how they treat the concept of time.

Strong future-time reference languages (strong FTR) require their 
speakers to use a different tense when speaking of the future. Weak 
future-time reference (weak FTR) languages do not.

"If I wanted to explain to an English-speaking colleague why I can't 
attend a meeting later today, I could not say 'I go to a seminar', 
English grammar would oblige me to say 'I will go, am going, or have to 
go to a seminar'.

"If, on the other hand, I were speaking Mandarin, it would be quite 
natural for me to omit any marker of future time and say 'I go listen 
seminar' since the context leaves little room for misunderstanding," 
says Prof Chen.

Even within European languages there are clear grammatical differences 
in the way they treat future events, he says.

"In English you have to say 'it will rain tomorrow' while in German you 
can say 'morgen regnet es' - it rains tomorrow."

Speakers of languages which only use the present tense when dealing with 
the future are likely to save more money than those who speak languages 
which require the use a future tense, he argues.

So how does a mere difference in grammar cause people to save less for 
their retirement?

"The act of savings is fundamentally about understanding that your 
future self - the person you're saving for - is in some sense equivalent 
to your present self," Prof Chen told the BBC's Business Daily.

"If your language separates the future and the present in its grammar 
that seems to lead you to slightly disassociate the future from the 
present every time you speak.

"That effectively makes it harder for you to save."

More on research results and controversy at the article link: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574


Ken