The Tailor Began with a Button

A couple of weeks back, my friend Simo forwarded an email to me that had me smiling and frustrated in equal measure.

The email contained a short Finnish text with a series of word plays, which I thought were rather clever – that was the smiley bit. However, as I reached repeatedly for the dictionary to try and decipher the text, I also realised how far I was from ever understanding Finnish – and that was the seriously frustrating bit.

Lack of Future Shapes Finns' Behaviour

Over a year ago, I wrote a blog-post about the fact that the Finnish language lacks a future tense. In that post, I contrasted this with French, which has 3 future tenses, and asked mischievously: "What does that say about the respective nations' attitude to life?"

Well, it turns out that it might indeed say a lot, if a recent piece of research by an American economics professor is to be believed.