Could the accent we allege skew our banking decision-making, and does the actuality that you're account this in English accomplish you beneath acceptable than a Mandarin apostle to save for your old age?
It is a arguable approach which has been accustomed some weight by new allegation from a Yale University behavioural economist, Keith Chen.
Prof Chen says his assay proves that the grammar of the accent we allege affects both our affairs and our health.
Future-speak
Prof Chen divides the world's languages into two groups, depending on how they amusement the abstraction of time.
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If your accent separates the approaching and the present in its grammar, that seems to advance you to hardly abstract the approaching from the present - Keith Chen Yale University
Strong future-time advertence languages (strong FTR) crave their speakers to use a altered close if speaking of the future. Anemic future-time advertence (weak FTR) languages do not.
"If I capital to explain to an English-speaking aide why I can't appear a affair after today, I could not say 'I go to a seminar', English grammar would bind me to say 'I will go, am going, or accept to go to a seminar'.
"If, on the added hand, I were speaking Mandarin, it would be absolutely accustomed for me to omit any brand of approaching time and say 'I go accept seminar' back the ambience leaves little allowance for misunderstanding," says Prof Chen.
Even aural European languages there are bright grammatical differences in the way they amusement approaching events, he says.
Disassociating the future
Speakers of languages which alone use the present close if ambidextrous with the approaching are acceptable to save added money than those who allege languages which crave the use a approaching tense, he argues.
"The act of accumulation is fundamentally about compassionate that your approaching cocky - the being you're extenuative for - is in some faculty agnate to your present self," Prof Chen told the BBC's Business Daily.
"If your accent separates the approaching and the present in its grammar that seems to advance you to hardly abstract the approaching from the present every time you speak.
"That finer makes it harder for you to save."
In his assay paper, he says that compared to speakers of languages which use a approaching tense, speakers of languages with no absolute approaching close are:
Acceptable to accept adored 39% added by the time they retire
31% added acceptable to save in a year
24% beneath acceptable to smoke
29% added acceptable to be physically active
13% beneath acceptable to be obese
Far-fetched?
Not surprisingly, Prof Chen's allegation accept been criticised by both economists and linguists.
They altercate there are amount of cultural, social, or bread-and-butter affidavit why altered accent speakers behave differently.
It is a point Prof Chen acknowledges, adage "I absolutely agree, it seemed adopted to me if I started accomplishing this assay as well."
But he says his assay has controlled for all these factors, by apperception on nine multi-lingual countries: Belgium, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Estonia, DR Congo, Nigeria, Malaysia, Singapore, and Switzerland.
Findings challenged
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The admeasurement to which the accent shapes the anticipation is tiny - John McWhorter Columbia University
But Morten Lau, administrator of Durham University's Centre for Behavioural Economics, says the factors which affect how abundant humans save accept little to do with language.
"In my own plan with savings, it is absorption ante that actuate accumulation behaviour."
Prof Lau says there are generally cogent differences aural accent groups, and just application the boilerplate of these after-effects in assay can prove problematic.
"You accept to be accurate the inferences you accomplish from correlations like these. It is actual difficult to ascendancy for assorted factors."
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