If You're Fat, Broke, and Smoking, Blame Language

First time accepted submitter derekmead writes "A Yale researcher says that culture differences how much money we save, how well we take care of ourselves, and other behavior indicative of taking the long view, are all based on language. His study argues that the way a language's syntax refers to the future (PDF) affects how its speakers perceive the future. For example, English and Greek make strong distinctions between the present and the future, while German doesn't, while English and Greek speakers are statistically poorer and in worse health than Germans. (The study includes a broader swath of languages/nationalities, but that's a start.)"

Whorfianism

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the return of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [wikipedia.org]

Captcha: "nonsense".

Re:jetzt

[antek9]

Morgen werde ich noch einen schreiben.

... and there you made your mistake. While that's a grammatically and semantically correct sentence, you're more likely to phrase it as, "Morgen schreibe ich noch einen.", actually using present tense to convey a future statement. I won't bother to RTFA, so I'll never know the argument it's proposing, but there might be some sense to it. There _is_ a tendency to melt present and future in German, and maybe that does re-program everyone's synapses accordingly, maybe not.

Anyway, the whole point would even be more valid for the Japanese who don't even know a future tense.

And here, dear children, are two sayings that might convey the article's thesis, one in German, and one in Japanese:

"Was Du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen!"
"Ashita yarou wa bakayarou!"

RTFA or, even, just TFS

[DragonWriter]

I believe him, but a sample size of three languages is not convincing at all.

The sample size isn't 3 languages (the table of languages, familes, and how they were coded takes up most of 3 pages.) There are three specific examples noted in TFS, with the further note "(The study includes a broader swath of languages/nationalities, but that's a start.)"

Re:So, it's true...

[antifoidulus]

Thank in no small part to their agricultural policies as well. While the exact reasons and mechanisms differ, the end result is that like in the US, in Japan healthy food is MUCH more expensive than the cheap garbage. If you are a person trying to get by and a bowl of instant ramen with high caloric content and very little nutritional value can be had for 100 yen, but a lunch of vegetable soup(esp. if you buy fresh) and an apple will easily cost you at least 3x that amount. Which do you think people will prefer? And to make things worse, their ag policy doesn't put tariffs on sugar, so junk food is incredibly cheap, in fact a candy bar can be had for less than half the price of an apple. This is just like the states where crap food is subsidized to hell and fruits and vegetables get almost nothing.

I have lived in the US, Germany, and Japan and I can say without hesitation that although German ag policies are far from perfect, they are easily the best of the 3. Crap food is still cheap, but so are fruits and vegetables(I miss getting the vegetable soup pack they sold at my local Netto, everything you need to make a good fresh vegetable soup for little more than a Euro).

Re:jetzt

[quenda]

The German reputation for brutality is well-founded. Their operas last three or four days. And they have no word for "fluffy".