Most of what I learned in college has left me. But there are two linguistic facts that have always stayed. To this day, I think of them often.
I remember an anthropology class where I learned about a native tribe who only had 4 numbers in their language: ”One”, “two”, “three” and “more than three.” I often wondered how that worked with their accounting and tax returns.
Secondly, I learned that ancient Greeks considered the future to be behind us. This sounds backwards to English speakers, but the Greek word “opiso,” which literally means ”back” or ”behind,” refers to the future and not the past. And if you open your mind to it, this makes a lot more sense. We know very well what happened in the past. We, hopefully, know with certainty what we had for breakfast this morning. From this perspective, we can see what is in front of us (the past) very clearly.
The future, however, is another matter entirely. It is difficult to predict or know what will happen in the future. From this perspective, the future would naturally be behind us, because we cannot see it.
I have long held these thoughts to remind myself that my conception of reality is arbitrary. It is just what I was taught and what I perceive. It is not, necessarily, truth. This has helped me become a great problem solver.
This is also one of the reasons Coley and I recommend learning a new language. Not only does it open geographical doors, but it expands your mind in ways that are hard to explain. At least, it has always been hard for me to explain, but with the help of the following example, I will attempt.
Keith Chen, a behavioral economist (I know, what the hell is that?) and a professor at Yale, did a study that adds more fuel to the fire. He ran across a curious map of Europe that showed which languages have a strong sense of the future and which ones do not.
To clarify, some languages have many rules, tenses, and grammar concerning the future. English is a perfect example. Other languages do not. These languages pay little attention to the future. In fact, when the context is right, they treat the future as if it were now.
Here is how Professor Chen describes it…
“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.”
Ok, so back to the map.
As an economist of sorts, he noticed the languages that did not spend a lot of energy differentiating the future from the present were located in countries that were doing well economically. As you can guess Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and French are not on the list. He found that curious and conducted some studies.
Here is what he determined:
If your language is not strong in future time reference (FTR) then you are:
- Likely to have saved 39% more by the time you retire
- 31% more likely to save money in a year
- 24% less likely to smoke
- 29% more likely to be physically active
- 13% less likely to be obese
That is pretty interesting! Maybe I should have continued studying German and not Spanish.
