The similarities of cultural connotaon of animal words in English and Chinese. All people ,drew on their backgrounds,decide what aword means. People have similar meaning only to the extent that they have had or can caticipate similar experience.(Larry A Samovor. 2000,120)
In the primary society ,people lived on hunt.During the prossess of hunting ,,know different animals characters. For people brain is similar, so different people can have the similar feeling for the same kind of animal, in the language, we can find these good examples.
In chinese, they have many stooies about fox. For example ,the story of “狐假虎威“. For the animal character will not change naturally, so we can say that people’s feeling is based on objective facts.
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In ancient time, when human canot explant the natural ? People thought there was the God’s power control the human being. For the difference of pattern of thinking, every nation has their owe belief.These beliefs are put down from generation to generaion. The have became one part of the culture. To the same animal,people have different cultual connotation.
Tn different languages,people can raise the same feeling for animal, because of human’s esthetic volue. Both in English and Chinese, “swan” stands for gracefalness and nobility. Inwestern perverb, swam is soul of poots. In chinese, there is also a story about swan. A toad hankering for a taste of swan.
People’senses are subjective, so people’many thinking are based on subjective thoughs. In the world ,diffenent countries can use the similar law, so people’s recogition for good and badness is similar. So does in esthetic value of animal words in English and Chinese. Tenneson said” Words, like nature, half reveal and conceal the within”(Larry A.Sarmorar, row,P132) Since culture is important in giving a language its characterities, the dissimilarities are natural more opparent. Compared with English, the Chinese show certain distinctive features.
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Moreever, people’association may be little or no scitific ground for such association. This is bacause the culture. There is no direct relation between words and meaning. The meaning of words is thought of people and roted in society. They can be patdown generation by generation The young generation may know the words’sense, buut not know why it has the meaning. Because the difference of tradition culture, word’s cultural connotition.
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From the former part, we can see that bacause the different of cultural backgroud, the same animal word can have different cultural connotation. But language is not so simple, the more complex corditoin is that, in english and Chinese, there are many