skew
使用言語がヒトの経済行動を変える（skew）という何とも大胆な学説に目がとまりました。いってみれば、現代版の Sapir-Whorf hypothesisでしょうか。ともかくもお読みください。（GP）
Why speaking English can make you poor when you retire
Could the language we speak skew our financial decision-making, and does the fact that you're reading this in English make you less likely than a Mandarin speaker to save for your old age?
It is a controversial theory which has been given some weight by new findings from a Yale University behavioural economist, Keith Chen.
Prof Chen says his research proves that the grammar of the language we speak affects both our finances and our health.
Bluntly, he says, if you speak English you are likely to save less for your old age, smoke more and get less exercise than if you speak a language like Mandarin, Yoruba or Malay.
Prof Chen divides the world's languages into two groups, depending on how they treat the concept of time.
Strong future-time reference languages (strong FTR) require their speakers to use a different tense when speaking of the future. Weak future-time reference (weak FTR) languages do not.
"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," says Prof Chen.
