The Comparison of Color Words in Chinese and English 英语毕业论文.docVIP

The Comparison of Color Words in Chinese and English 1.Introduction People live in a colorful world, scientific research indicates that seven million kinds of colors can be found in the world. However, color expressions are only limited to several hundreds in classification, and words denoting colors form part of the nuclear vocabulary in almost every language. (邵淑华 “As to the color words, the literal meanings paint our language, thus our language appears colorful; the associative meanings fill our language, thus our languages sounds meaningful.” (Li Cuijuan, 2002) Color produces specific meaning in the minds of people, and causes specific association and inspires the special response; this is social intension of the color. In this way, color is no longer an objective material, but turns into the abstract symbolic color, immerge in dyeing body of culture. Different countries have different color terms because of their different national histories, social systems, religious beliefs, national characteristics, customs, ways of living and their geographic differences and so on. (杨红艳, 2005) Therefore, every language has phrases or sentences that cannot be understood literally. Even if you know the meanings of all the words in a phrase and understand the grammar of the phrase completely, the meaning of the phrase may still be confusing. (Richard A.Spears，Betty Kirkpatrick，2002) Due to this reason, much attention should be paid to the similarities and differences of the color words in order to promote cross-cultural communication. 2. Comparison of the Color Words in Chinese and English As there are so many color words in the world, it is impossible to talk about all of them in the paper. So I take the following six basic ones as example to compare their similarities and differences in Chinese and English. 2.1 Red Red is one of the oldest colors in the human society, and it reminds people of blood at first sight. Nowadays, no matter in English-speaking countries or in C