On Cultural Differences between English and Chinese
from Color Words
1 Introduction
Culture is complex, which includes knowledge, belief, art, morality, law customs and other abilities and habits acquired in the society. [1] It is characteristic of apparent traits of nation, that is, cultural individuality. Different cultures have different cultural forms, and language level reflected to this pattern, which is manifested as linguistic differences. [2] Since cultural difference is one main obstacle in communication across cultures, it is important to acquire the cultural differences.
2 The cultural differences in color words between Chinese and English
2.1 The differences in historical traditions
White is the symbol of God, angel, happiness and pure. In western wedding ceremony, a bride must wear a white bridal gown. It grew out of an English religious story, which says Magi and Draids wore white clothes in the resurrection of Jesus. Thus, white is widely used in western wedding ceremonies. [3] However, white, in China, is mourning color. Relatives should express their condolences by wearing white mourning dresses or a flower in chest.
Red is the symbol of auspicious in Chinese traditions, which brings to mind words like happiness and health. Red antithetical couplets are pasted in spring festival. Besides, at Chinese wedding ceremonies, the brides must wear red dresses, and red” hi” words are pasted on the walls, doors and windows. Furthermore, the cash gifts from customers and elders are packed with red paper. Even after a baby born, red eggs are presented to relatives and friends to show celebration. While in native English countries, red means blood, terror, danger and babbittry. For example, many western cities have a lot of red light districts. And in English, scarlet means bright red, lewd and notorious.
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From here we can see that different historical traditions lead to different attitudes towards color. That is, Chinese culture perfect red rather than white completely contrary to the Anglo-American culture.
2.2 The differences of national psychology
“National psychology is like a dark underground drifting, surging in a national awareness of the rock, and flowing through the veins of the nation. "[4] Great differences exist in psychology and ways looking at problems between Chinese and western people. In Chinese and English, the same kind of substance can be described with different color words. For instance, we call a kind of tea “black tea” in English, while we name it “hong tea” in Chinese. Apparently, the color black in English is completely different from the color “hong” in Chinese. Why do Chinese and western people describe the same tea in different color words? Western people call it “black” with an eye to the tealeaves while Chinese people focusing on the color of tea itself. It’s easy to conclude that this difference is due to the different viewpoint they observe the surroundings which is seemingly contradictory but actually not. So is the color yellow, which is the legal respected color in Chinese feudal society and represents imperial authority、resplendence and supreme. It is the color standing for emperor and the symbol of ancient china. However, in English culture, the color yellow usually means gloom、morbidness、disgust and timidity like yellow-bellied、a yellow streak、yellow card and the yellow press.
2.3 The differences of religious beliefs With the deeply influence of religious beliefs, many color words in English are endowed with different religious intension and moral. During the Middle Ages, the artists were asked to use some kind of color. For example, the robe of Virgin Mary should paint in blue, in preparation for the type period, the Christ clothes also painted in blue, and in the ignorance period, painted in black, and the resurrection caricatured as a red or white. Why should has such a color transformation? It is due to their religious imagination. Blue means they coming from heaven, black is the Christ and 2
representatives from the dark angel experience, red and white for god's nature:
wisdom and love. In china, the color yellow is classic color of Buddhism. The monks and lamas are all in yellow, but Judas(Biblical characters, is was said he betrayed Jesus and was one of the followers) was in yellow showed his rebel、jealousy and weak. So we can get concluded that due to the differences in religious beliefs between Chinese and western people, great differences exist in what they think of the same color.
2.4 The differences of living habitude
In western countries, the color purple is advocated, which is the symbol of gloriousness and density and the symbol of kingdoms and thrones. And if someone was in purple, it would suggest that the one is in high places, therefore in ancient Greek and ancient Rome, emperors、archons and generals were all in purple. And as to china, people in high places were all in yellow, which represented the emperors. Moreover, the customs also affect the dressing a lot. Generally, people wear white or light-colored clothes in order to reflect sunlight in hot days, on the contrary people prefer wearing deep color so as to absorb heat. However, different countries have different prefers and customs. For example, in the city of York, women wear tights in different colors to show their replies to the eligible men: the color yellow means even chances, the color means agreement, and the color red means disagreement. [5] For another example,, Chinese people are customed to describing the light yellow with “beige”, while the western people with “cream” or ”butter-yellow”. [6] To conclude, the differences of eating habits and living habitude of Chinese and western people lead to the cultural differences.
2.5 The differences of emotional color
Language is emotional, and it can be divided into complimentary、derogatory and neutral. It’s not unusual that a word has different emotions in almost all languages, so the color words do. Taking the word” blue” as an example, it impresses people a 3
feeling of warm: blue sky inspires people a dream for the future, and the blue ocean always brought people unlimited daydreams. Taking the kind of emotions into English situations, as the popular song” love is blue” is misunderstood as the color of love is blue. Actually, instead of inspiring western people a lot of daydream, it should give them a feeling of doom and gloom. That is, the word blue usually means unhappy, such as in the blues、blue Monday. Thus it can be seen, the emotions of color words are various either Chinese or English, and only one word may has different meanings. So only when we understand the emotions in a correct way, can we appreciate the characteristics of Chinese and English linguistics.
3 the influences that the cultural differences having on the color words
3.1 The similarities of the connotations of the color words
Cultural overlap is common in any two cultures, and as a part of the language, the symbolic significance of the color words can’t be simplex but multi-tiered. Either in English countries or in China, the color red is usually related to happiness. Besides, red in English means” embarrassed” “shy” “anger”, which also resemble it in Chinese.
For example:
(1) Red means happiness both in English and Chinese
English: red-letter day
Red carpet
Chinese:红榜 honor roll
红得发紫 enjoy great popularity
(2) Red means shy、anger、both in English and Chinese
English: be red in face
See red
Chinese: 她脸红了。 She becomes red-faced.\ her face turns red.
她的话惹得他对她暴跳如雷。 Her remarks were like a red rag to 4
a bull.
The symbolic significance of the color black in both Chinese and English, is roughly the same, which both means evil、unfortunate and pain. In Chinese culture black is the color of the universe, and also the color of ghost. Ghost lives in dark underground, naturally the color of ghost is, of course, black, so the color black has been dominant in Chinese painting. In the west, especially in British and American culture, black is a kind of unlucky color, which often means evil, death, mourning or even hell. Such as Lord Satan, who is called the prince of darkness. [7] The following expressions are about black:
English: black-letter day black sheep
black hat black deeds
Chinese: 黑手 evil backstage manipulator
黑帮 reactionary gang
黑心肠 evil mind
People will enhance the color sensation in a similar way, and with the similarities of all the cultures and culture penetration. Although English and Chinese belong to two different cultural systems, and for either similarities or differences exist in any two cultures and anything has its opposite, many similarities exist in observation and expressions among different nations, which would rather be considered as a coincidence than cultural overlap.
3.2 The differences of the connotations of the color words
3.2.1 The connotations completely not corresponding
Take the word” hong” in Chinese as an example, Chinese people call weddings “ hong xi shi ” and funerals “bai shi”, thus the saying “hong bai xi shi” can’t be understood by western. It is completely wrong to translate it as “red and white affairs” not “weddings and funerals” which was correct.
For anther example, “hui se” income in Chinese means hidden income, if only translated according to its face value, it will be totally unrelated to “gray income”, “semi-overt” or “off-the book income” seems much better. [8]
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The literal meaning of “red tape” in English is “hong daizi”, which stemmed from the 17th BC official documents packed with red tapes in the UK government. And nowadays it has been extended to gobbledygook、bureaucracy or cumbersome procedures.
Through analyzing above, we can conclude that some color words means completely different in different cultures. Different histories lead to different national psychology、way of thinking and living habitude, therefore it is essential to find out the differences and understand the correct meaning of the color words, that is the background or the hidden culture of the color words.
3.2.2 The connotations partly not corresponding
The color words in English and Chinese not only have the same connotation but also have the different.
For example, there are a lot of words suggesting that the color black is related to the meaning of “not good、bad or evil” in both English and Chinese, such as black list、black-hearted、black money and so on. Moreover, the color black in English means misfortune、disaster、disgust、anger、melancholy or gloomy, while it in Chinese means reaction、fierce or illegal, and these connotations in essence are the same. However, due to the color of iron is similar to the color black, people in China have considered the color black as the symbol of good characters——outspoken、firm and selfless. Therefore, in traditionally facial make-up in opera, the color black is used to describe the gracious characters of “Bao zheng”、”Li kui” and so on.
3.2.3 Connotations vacant phenomenon
In one language, some kind of color word has its rich connotations, but in another language it does not have the same meaning, thus causing the connotations vacant phenomenon. Green is the most typical representative.
1) Green in English has its unique connotations, it can means no experience, childish or novice, etc. Such as: greenhorn, green hand.
2) Green in English also means "jealous" like green-eyed monster, but in 6
Chinese, the word “yan hong” has the same meaning. If translated "jealous"to "red-eyed" , it would be a big mistake. [9]
3) In UK, “green pounds" refers to the internal computing community defined agricultural prices high rate pounds." [10]
However, there are no such connotations in Chinese. For another example: some of the English phrase "blue in the face, blue music, blue Monday, blue blood, the blue Ribbon" (respectively was worrying, depression, depressed, the meaning of noble origin, outstanding). And its connotations are peculiar in the English cultwre, some still come from English allusions, but there are no corresponding words in Chinese.
4 Handling the culture differences in international communications
Different development environment leads to the different implication and information of English and Chinese. And if going to communicate across these two cultures, it is necessary to understand the impact of culture on language, remove the obstacles of cultural differences and try to avoid the barriers caused by color words in communications.
4.1 In international communications, perceptual is important than rational Firstly, international communication refers to the different cultural backgrounds of communication between individuals, that is, people from different cultural backgrmunds of the information between what happened. From a psychological standpoint, encoding and decoding conducted by people from different backgrounds is international communication. "[11]
In international verbal communications, efficient communications will be blocked if what the other side has said isn’t understood, so it is required to understand either the literal meaning or the hidden cultural information. As for the domestic “bai xiang” battery, it was once sold overseas, its advertisement ballyhooing the property of “white elephant”. Hardly realize that white elephant means the big and useless things in the western background. Be short for the acquisition of English culture cause 7
great economic loss. So it gives us a better understanding that don’t judge subjectively or take the words too literally. Only when understood the background information clearly, can we avoid weakness in international communications.
4.2 Acquiring a realistic understanding of the connotation of the color words in English and Chinese
A language, as a communication media, is the product of its culture. The knowledge of the other culture is the knowledge of its spoken habit and its spoken style. In daily conversation, the synonym of the connotation can cause the communicative barrier even communicative disaster. [12]
As the color black mentioned above, it symbolizes death and evil, and even is a devil incarnate in the Christians. So it’s not difficult to find that why it stands to reason that the Afro-American endures racial discrimination in American society.
The following example illustrates the problem:
Linguist S.I.Hayakawa once took the sobering example to emphasize that the ignorant of word connotations could bring communications many troubles.
One outstanding black sociologist told about his experience as a young man. He travelled away from home where one black man couldn’t been seen. And a white couple served him meals kindly except calling him little nigger. Although they were friendly to him, the address still made him very unpleasant. At last, he nerved himself and asked the master not to call him with insulting words.
“Who insulted you, kid?”
“You, sir, you always call me insulting words.”
“Which address?”
“Er, you know.”
“I never insulted you, kid.”
“You called me nigger.”
“Oh, what kind of insult is that? You are black, aren’t you?”
……[13]
In the verbal communications above, that white master didn’t realize the 8
emotional coloring of the word nigger, and he just used as the synonym of black. However, as for the black, nigger is a word using for insult. As a result, what should be noticed in international communications is that, regardless some words are synonyms, their connotations are quite different, thus it is necessary to clarity the context in the course of verbal communications.
5 Conclusion
Nature is colorful, in general, people all over the world have the same feeling to all the colors, however, the color words once used for socially communicative activities, it will have various specific meanings, arousing special imaginations and stimulating special emotions. Meanwhile, all the words will change by the symbolic meaning from visual and mental associations. It is natural to consider that the color words suggest the abundant cultural connotations and distinctive national mentality between West and China. Trough in-depth study of the color words, the fundamental differences between English and Chinese as well as the two cultures can be seen through. As a result, to know and master the differences of the color words in English and Chinese has a profound impact on communication across cultures.
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