Language matters in Hong Kong’s birth rate debate, not just money
Hong Kong’s fertility woes are not just about affordability. They might also involve language use and how it shapes our views of the future
However, there is another, lesser-known factor that works more subtly and implicitly. It comes not from economics but from the structure of the language or languages we speak each day.
Consider a simple contrast. In English, one says, “Yesterday it rained. Now it is raining. Tomorrow it will rain.” In Chinese, the same three sentences need no such grammatical marking. The verb does not change. The future is not grammatically separated from the present.
