Prof. Chen

‘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.

Prof Chen divides the world’s languages into two groups, depending on how they treat the concept of time. “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”. 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… “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.’ (BBC News).