THE FURUTE TENSE EFFECT

Grammar puts English speakers at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to saving money or practicing healthy habits. A new study suggests that people who speak languages that use different verb tenses to distinguish between the present and the future—for instance, saying “I’m going to” or “I will” when describing an action they’ll take later—are much worse at planning than people who speak languages that blur the present and the future. Yale Business School researcher Keith Chen examined the planning skills of people in 76 countries and found that those whose language contains strong “future markers,” including speakers of English, Korean, and Russian, were 30 percent less likely to save money than were speakers of languages that use weaker future markers, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German. In those languages, speakers can use the same verb forms to refer to the present and the future, relying on the context of their conversation to clarify what time they’re referring to. That makes them feel that the future is closer, Scientific American reports, causing them to save more for retirement, smoke less, and exercise more than people whose grammar firmly separates now from later.