Things that don't go together, Ch. 8

Linguistics, Economics and the World Debt Crises.

But first a riddle:

What do you call a linguist trying to be clever?

Cunning.

Never mind:-)

What do you call an economist trying to be a clever linguist?

A pseudo-scientist.  

Here is an example.   Or at least a  great excuse for the Italians, Spanish and Greeks for going through their money like drunken sailors.

Its all a problem with their language.

In a recently published "working" paper, an economist at the Yale School of Management, argued that speakers of languages with a “weak,” or less distinguished, future tense are more likely to save money for the future. According to the paper, "speakers of these languages feel more connected to their future selves because of the linguistic difference, which makes them 30 percent more likely to have saved money in a given year."

For example, according to the paper,  in English one says “I will be meeting with a student tomorrow,” but the equivalent phrase in Mandarin Chinese is “I meet with student tomorrow.” The economist says that languages such as English use a “strong,” clearly differentiated and obligatory future tense, which creates a “bigger wedge between you and ‘future you’.” By contrast, languages with a weak and non-obligatory future tense, such as Chinese, make less of a distinction between the present and the future, he said.

Speakers of Japanese, German, Swedish and Chinese, which have weak or non-obligatory future tenses, correlate with higher savings rates.

In response, an actual professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, disagrees:  "It is amazing how people without training in linguistics consider themselves expert enough to make pronouncements about language..." “It’s as if I made statements about economics on the grounds that there are words written on our money.”  This from a professor who generally likes cunning linguists.  And who happens to be female.  Res ipsa Loquitor.  Ok, I'll stop.  No I won't.   It just keeps rolling off the tongue.   Anyway....

I'll give you 3 billion other individual reasons why the Chinese save money even though their future is a little tense.  Maybe if they had more cunning liguists they would be more relaxed.   Less than half of them would be, anyway.

And over a billion reasons why the Indians wear their wealth around their finger or around their neck, despite having all sorts of Hindi words for reincarnation.

Hold me watch while I develop a grand unifying theory for just about everything based on a single concept.

God I wish it were that simple.  Oh God, Oh God, Oh God....spit...

Now who is being the cunning linguist?:-)