Comparison Between English and Chinese Language

Comparison Between side of meat and Chinese LanguageLanguage is a combination of human-beings history and market-gardening, containing various aspects of tender characteristics such as national consciousness, historical culture, customs etc. And spoken communication serves as dress of fantasy, thoughts be always expressed by rowing, without thinking, words and language would be implicationless. Meanwhile, the different heathen background and pagan usage make Chinese and Western in a different soma of thinking. Vocabulary is the or so basic and important materials of building language. So cultural diversity incarnate mental lexicon as the most outstanding part. almost of the words do non shake off a literary marrow, however with a implied implication, symbol meaning, figurative meaning and intension meaning, and overly gift a word with emotion color. Since ancient times, tools are closely relate to human activities. Myths, fairy tales are very much related to all good-hearteds of creatures in both western country and eastern country. In these literary works, tools are often endowed with human qualities and characteristics. Due to the different culture, the connotative meaning of these vocabulary is generally different. This article, from the angle of linguistic and lexicology side, compare and analysis the carnal vocabulary in face and Chinese, in order to reveal the convertibleities and differences in the midst of Western and Chinese culture.Key words Animal vocabulary, culture, connotationI. arbitrary equivalents betwixt incline and Chinese.What I called absolute equivalents is not that elbow room the resembling basic or denotative meaning but also the roughly resembling cultural connotation and this is called culturaloverlaps. For example wolf, an wild animal looks like a big dog. In English , wolf often mapd to describe a pervert man. We have the same meaning in Chinese. They both developed with the greedy characteris tics of wolf .Lamb in English refers to a gentle, meek person, also Chinese have the same tactual sensation when they say this world. Take another world fox, we often see as cunning as a fox, in Chinese, fox has also the same meaning of cunning, refers to a wily people.Similarly as cheerful as a lark as busy as bee as avoirdupois as a pig as dull as an ass. every of these animal words express the same meaning no emergence in Chinese or English. It reflect the common of the two cultures. commonwealth of different culture are accompaniment in the same earth. For most of them, the natural environment and some living conditions are similar, so on that point are a lot of words have the same meaning. These shows the similary of culture.II. partial equivalents between English and ChineseVocabulary between Chinese and English which have the different literary meaning, but can express the same connotation meaning, I called it partial equivalents vocabulary. That is to say, two differ ent anima word piece a same culture connotation. Eg cattle(ox) ,plays an important role in Chinese life, cattle, the basis of farm work, plough in the form land and commit beaf, milk, people raise them, use them, like them, and respect them. So Chinese people often say as strong as ox to describe a man with strength, but in English we trust to express the same meaning, we have to use as strong as a horse. It originated in eastern and western ancient farming methods. British us horses to cultivate land in early times. So they use horse to share the same meaning while Chinese uses cattle. lion has a rich cultural connotation in English, the image of a lion is brave, imposing manner and majesty. And it is called the king of beasts, so there is alionheart (warriors), majesticasalion (as ideal as a lion), alterarylion (literary celebrity) sayings. The British treat the lion as their symbol of the nation, The British lion which refers to the British. In the culture of the Chinese nat ion, the lion had not that much connotation, instead, the similar association is tiger . In the national opinion, the tiger is the king of beasts, it refers to prowess, majesty. In Chinese, the tiger replaced the lions position.Similarly, English use a filthy sheep while Chinese use horse to describe a timorous defenseless simpleton who is readily preyed upon as timid as a rabbit (mouse instead in Chinese) to express a person who is timorous.These kind of vocabulary reflects the difference between Chinese and Western culture. English and Chinese people created synonyms according to their own experiences, but each pair of synonyms were apply different animal words, this is mainly due to differences such as climate of production, thinking habits and customs, etc between English and Chinese .Based on the same concept, they have different association, so they use different metaphors to refer to these words.III. Conflict vocabulary between English and ChineseConflict vocabulary means the English and Chinese language share the same basic meaning, but the cultural connotation is different, even opposite praise or blame meaning of animal words in the two kinds of culture. The association of people would be totally different sometimes. Dragon has rich cultural meanings in Chinese. It symbolizes the Chinese nation. For Chinese people, a dragon is something sacred and has been referred to as the ancestor of the Chinese nation-that is why Chinese call themselves the descendents of dragon. In ancient time, people thought dragon is a mythical animal with great power. It symbolized the king in feudal society. so the king were called sons of dragons. Also parent would like their children to be like dragon, they often name their children with dragon because they hope their children can add together to something when grew up. So Chinese people are very respect to dragon .But in western culture, people think that dragon is an large animal that has wings and a long tail and can breathe fire. So they think dragon is a very dangerious and winged monster that get out kills and eats people. In English, dragon symbolize evil or a woman who is fierce, unpleasant or has bad temper.Similarly, dog, phoenix and so more other animal words have totally different connotation in English and Chinese . so these kinds of words make a big trouble for English learners or Chinese learners.In conclusion, animal vocabulary in English and Chinese language have similar meaning but more different culture connotation .While the maturement of culture in Chinese and English, the vocabulary developed as well. The differences in culture connotation varies from many aspects of culture such as religion, customs, living habits, stories. So culture acts a very important role in animal vocabulary. When we learn a foreign vocabulary, do not only know its literary meaning, but find the relations and difference between the mother language and foreign one, and pay much attention to the culture background and culture connotation.