Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology

Submitted by AutoModerator t3_xwbf66 in askscience

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology

Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".

Asking Questions:

Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions. The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.

Answering Questions:

Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.

If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here.

Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here. Ask away!

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reasonable_riot t1_ir6mf4s wrote

Should we expect changes to the way Ukrainian and Russian in Ukraine are spoken as a result of the war?

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reasonable_riot t1_ir6ocbp wrote

What happens if a country borrows too much practically? It seems to me that using debt to pay debt is common for countries, no? If so, why aren’t more countries in a debt spiral?

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AdMean3997 t1_ir7by9l wrote

Which do you think is the most important factor in maintaining a democratic
system of government: popular participation, economic prosperity, or effective institutions?

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bellmanwatchdog t1_ir7gtma wrote

What are some of the most educational subreddits?

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DoughnutMundane592 t1_ir9o21h wrote

Replying to reasonable_riot (#38,491)

If a governments debt is too high, generally we will see a similar situation to the UK after the financial crash of 2007/08. Austerity measures to try to reduce the debt. The government can also lose credit rating, again as seen in the UK for example, where their credit rating has decreased from AAA to AA, meaning their borrowing is more expensive in the future. This in turn means they have to pay more back, so typically will have to raise more in taxes. Generally speaking if a govt borrows too much, it will mean the everyday citizen will have less disposable income at some point in the near future, usually through higher taxes. As well as less being spent on public services etc. countries will try to manage borrowing with further borrowing, but if they don’t get it right.l, they will spiral and have to take drastic measures to reduce the national debt, again, as seen in UK as a real life example

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Autoground t1_iraf09q wrote

Should i not buy a house in America right now? Should i sell a house in America right now?

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PolusCoeus t1_it4dzrg wrote

Replying to reasonable_riot (#38,405)

It's going to depend on the outcome of the war, somewhat. But, generally, the ways that languages in contact influence each other depends on the nature and frequency of their interaction. It's also going to depend on how speakers of Ukrainian feel about the Russian language itself (in contrast to how they feel about the Russian government, army, etc). If they associate the Russian language with occupiers, it's very reasonable to expect them to strengthen their resistance to it.

A few examples of that happening historically:

  1. after Iceland's independence from Denmark, there was a concerted effort to remove "Danish" features from the Icelandic language.
  2. after the American Revolution, the same happened with American and British English. Webster, whose school grammar book became standard, intentionally made changes to help make American English distinct from British English: removing the u from words like colour/color; reversing the -re in words like theatre/theater; etc.
  3. the same happened with English and French during the 100 Year wars. In fact, that's one of the main reasons English still exists. It had declined in use after the Norman Conquest, but was revived in the 1300s, for a number of reasons. Henry IV was actually the first King of England since the Conquest to speak English as his native language. Some of the earlier kings didn't speak English at all.

Without a negative response to the use of the Russian language, the two are somewhat related, and depending on the level of contact between them (which I suspect is high), there could be longer term influence. That influence usually operates at three basic levels: words, sounds, structure. (meaning, first we'd see shared word use and/or word borrowing; then sounds, then sentence structures/grammar like word order, methods of negation (how you say 'not'), etc.

That longer term response is both natural and a more likely reaction if say, Russia were to conquer Ukraine and make an effort to replace Ukrainian with Russian, or if the war is short lived, they resolve their problems, and the interactions between the two languages basically continue as before.

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