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1、基思陈（Keith Chen）：你存钱的能力跟你用的语言有关？The global economic financial crisis has reignited public interestin something thats actually one of the oldest questions in economics,dating back to at least before Adam Smith.And that is, why is it that countries with seemingly similar economies and institutionscan d
2、isplay radically different savings behavior?Now, many brilliant economists have spent their entire lives working on this question,and as a field weve made a tremendous amount of headwayand we understand a lot about this.What Im here to talk with you about today is an intriguing new hypothesisand som
3、e surprisingly powerful new findings that Ive been working onabout the link between the structure of the language you speakand how you find yourself with the propensity to save.Let me tell you a little bit about savings rates, a little bit about language,and then Ill draw that connection.Lets start
4、by thinking about the member countries of the OECD,or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.OECD countries, by and large, you should think about theseas the richest, most industrialized countries in the world.And by joining the OECD, they were affirming a common commitmentto democ
5、racy, open markets and free trade.Despite all of these similarities, we see huge differences in savings behavior.So all the way over on the left of this graph,what you see is many OECD countries saving over a quarter of their GDP every year,and some OECD countries saving over a third of their GDP pe
6、r year.Holding down the right flank of the OECD, all the way on the other side, is Greece.And what you can see is that over the last 25 years,Greece has barely managed to save more than 10 percent of their GDP.It should be noted, of course, that the United States and the U.K. are the next in line.No
7、w that we see these huge differences in savings rates,how is it possible that language might have something to do with these differences?Let me tell you a little bit about how languages fundamentally differ.Linguists and cognitive scientists have been exploring this question for many years now.And t
8、hen Ill draw the connection between these two behaviors.Many of you have probably already noticed that Im Chinese.I grew up in the Midwest of the United States.And something I realized quite early onwas that the Chinese language forced me to speak about and -in fact, more fundamentally than that -ev
9、er so slightly forced me to think about family in very different ways.Now, how might that be? Let me give you an example.Suppose I were talking with you and I was introducing you to my uncle.You understood exactly what I just said in English.If we were speaking Mandarin Chinese with each other, thou
10、gh,I wouldnt have that luxury.I wouldnt have been able to convey so little information.What my language would have forced me to do,instead of just telling you, This is my uncle,is to tell you a tremendous amount of additional information.My language would force me to tell youwhether or not this was
11、an uncle on my mothers side or my fathers side,whether this was an uncle by marriage or by birth,and if this man was my fathers brother,whether he was older than or younger than my father.All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesnt let me ignore it.And in fact, if I want to speak correctly
12、,Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.Now, that fascinated me endlessly as a child,but what fascinates me even more today as an economistis that some of these same differences carry through to how languages speak about time.So for example, if Im speaking in English, I have to speak grammat
13、ically differentlyif Im talking about past rain, It rained yesterday,current rain, It is raining now,or future rain, It will rain tomorrow.Notice that English requires a lot more information with respect to the timing of events.Why? Because I have to consider thatand I have to modify what Im saying
14、to say, It will rain, or Its going to rain.Its simply not permissible in English to say, It rain tomorrow.In contrast to that, thats almost exactly what you would say in Chinese.A Chinese speaker can basically say somethingthat sounds very strange to an English speakers ears.They can say, Yesterday
15、it rain, Now it rain, Tomorrow it rain.In some deep sense, Chinese doesnt divide up the time spectrumin the same way that English forces us to constantly do in order to speak correctly.Is this difference in languagesonly between very, very distantly related languages, like English and Chinese?Actual
16、ly, no.So many of you know, in this room, that English is a Germanic language.What you may not have realized is that English is actually an outlier.It is the only Germanic language that requires this.For example, most other Germanic language speakersfeel completely comfortable talking about rain tomorrowby saying, Morgen regnet es,quite literally to an English ear, It rain tomorrow.This led me, as a behavioral economist, to a
