評論
打印
For example, most other Germanic language speakers
例如，說日爾曼語系的人
feel completely comfortable talking about rain tomorrow by saying, "Morgen regnet es,"
會很自然的用以下的話表達明天下雨：“Morgen regnet es”
quite literally to an English ear, "It rain tomorrow."
說英語的人聽了就類似“It rain tomorrow.”
This led me, as a behavioral economist, to an intriguing hypothesis.
這讓我，作為一個行為經濟學家，想到一個有趣的假設。
Could how you speak about time, could how your language forces you to think about time,
你描述時間的方式，你的語言迫使你思考時間的方式，
affect your propensity to behave across time?
是否會影響到你對不同時間段的偏好？
You speak English, a futured language.
你們說的是英語，區分將來時態的。
And what that means is that every time you discuss the future, or any kind of a future event,
這意味著每次你談論到未來的時間，或者未來要發生的事情時，
grammatically you're forced to cleave that from the present
你需要在語法層面將未來和現在分來，
and treat it as if it's something viscerally different.
就像是兩者之間有本質不同一樣。
Now suppose that that visceral difference makes you subtly dissociate the future from the present every time you speak.
現在假設這種語言上的差別讓你每次說話的時候都意識到當下和未來細微差別。
If that's true and it makes the future feel like something more distant and more different from the present,
如果這個假設成立，會導致“未來”看起來跟“現在”更加遙遠一些，
that's going to make it harder to save.
要你存錢就會困難一些。
If, on the other hand, you speak a futureless language, the present and the future, you speak about them identically.
另一方面，如果你的語言沒有區分將來時態，你說現在和未來的句式是一樣的。
If that subtly nudges you to feel about them identically, that's going to make it easier to save.
這點細微的差別會讓你覺得他們是一樣的，會讓你更傾向于存錢。
Now this is a fanciful theory. I'm a professor, I get paid to have fanciful theories.
現在我有了一套奇特的理論。我是教授，教授就是生產奇思怪想的。
But how would you actually go about testing such a theory?
但是你怎么檢驗這樣一套理論呢？
Well, what I did with that was to access the linguistics literature.
我閱讀了大量的語言學文獻作為調研。
And interestingly enough, there are pockets of futureless language speakers situated all over the world.
有意思的是，沒有將來時態的語言，全球各地都有。
This is a pocket of futureless language speakers in Northern Europe.
歐洲北部也有一些語言沒有將來時態。
