中西方颜色意义的差异

A Contrastive Study between Chinese and EnglishColor学院：外国语学院专业：英语专业学号：08001111作者姓名：王海南指导教师：厉娜Abstract：Color in English and Chinese has many kinds of meanings and plays an important role in psychological culture and ethnic custom. From black, white, red, green, yellow, purple, and blue, we can see the different meanings in color between English and Chinese.Key words:Color; English; Chinese; Psychological culture; Ethnic custom.Ⅰ.Introduction:Nature is colorful. Color has specific meaning in people’s heart, causes specific legend and arouses special reflection. In English and Chinese many colors can reflect different culture and emotion. Especially in Chinese, there are already many color words and the same as English. So there I want to contrast black, white, red, green, yellow, purple, and blue between English and Chinese.Ⅱ.Literature ReviewColor stands for many meanings and different colors have different meanings. Generally speaking, black stands for sadness and stateliness; white stands for pure; red stands for good luck; green stands for optimism; yellow stands for happiness; purple stands for mystery; and blue stands for dejection. People prefer to choose optimistic color to decorate their working and living environment, such as white light blue, green, or yellow.Ⅲ.Contrastive Study:A. BlackBlack has the same meaning in English and Chinese. For example, black stands for sadness and British and American wear black clothes in funeral ceremony and Chinese are used to wearing black mesh. In English, Black Friday is a sad day because that day is the day that Jesus suffered in the Friday before Easter. Moreover, black always stands for darkness、cattiness and evil. At that time, in Chinese it also has similar expression, such as Underworld（黑社会），Black Circle Boys（黑帮），Black money（黑钱），Black market（黑市），Black day（凶日），Black future（暗淡的前途），Blackmail（勒索），Black list（黑名单）.However, black also has different meanings between English and Chinese. In Chinese black stands for honor, manliness, austerity, honesty and mystery and so much like these commendatory terms. In theatrical mask, we always use black to stand for people who is honest and austere. In addition, because black sometimes gives people a kind of feeling that it is insidious, sinister and horrible, it stands for evil and reactionary, for example, if you want to say someone that he is sinister, you can say that he is black hearted（黑心肠）, hidden evil inside a thing is inside story（黑幕）,reactionary members are called black circle boys. While in English black also has its specific meaning. In the Bible, black stands for devil, evil, suffering and misfortune. So black is the basic taboos in western culture because it means death, bad omen and disaster, such as black death（黑死病）,to wear black for her father（为她父亲戴孝）, black words（不吉利的话）, a black letter day（凶日）.Black also means crime, such as black guard（恶棍）, blackmail（敲诈、勒索）. It stands for shame, such as a black mark（污点）, black sheep（败家子）,a black eye（丢脸）. In literature, there is a form called black humor. It is a kind of humor which is too exaggerated. B. WhiteWhite has ominous meaning in Chinese, because when family member died, others would wear white clothes, white hat. They express their sadness in this way. In ancient times, people call man who causes disaster Whiter Tiger. People who is an intellectual imbecile are called idiot（白痴）. We call ordinary people whites. White also stands for reactionary, decadent and backward, such as white terror. Of course, there are commend meaning of white in Chinese, such as white snow in spring（阳春白雪）.In western culture, white symbolizes elegance, pure, nobility, equity, lucky and auspicious, so western people uphold white. According to the Bible, Israel sacrificial offerings of God are white, so white is regarded as color for holiday. In British, white symbolizes pure, happiness, hope, bright, peace, power, beauty and kindness, for example in British wedding ceremony, bride wears white wedding garment and inSimsala Grimm, Snow White is a clever, kind and beautiful girl. In “Paradise Lose”（by John Milton）, at first Satan and other angel are white, but when Satan is expelled, he becomes a black devil.. White also has some derogatory meanings, such as white-hot（愤怒的）, white feather（懦弱的）,white-faced（由于生病脸色苍白）.C. RedIn Chinese red has commendatory meaning, while in English, red is usually used in noun or has derogatory meaning. For example, Chinese use red to stand for joyous occasions, wedding and lucky such as wedding and funeral（红白喜事）. It means that celebrate a wedding or an old man’s death without any pain. And red also means good luck or wonderful things such as good luck（红运）prosperous （红火）which means the business is very good. “红男绿女” which means boys and girls wearing beautiful clothes. “红角儿” the famous star. Sometimes red in Chinese is u sed to indicate jealousy in order to satirize, such as pink eye（红眼病）is used to satirize the person who does not only admire others’ fame and wealth but also is jealous of them. Although red in English can represent vigor or virile, like “red-blooded man”,it is used as derogatory word more frequently. For example, “not be worth a red cent” means worthless or regarding something as being worthless. “A red herring” means a fact or argument that leads attention away from the matter being considered. Another way of using red in English is to use red in front of a noun as modifier in order to compose a new noun, such as “redcap”—means the member of the military police or a railway porter. Otherwise, some Chinese words which has the word red have no relationship with red in English. For example,红人—a favorite with someone in power and honourroll(红榜). This situation can be found in Chinese, too. Red alert(紧急警报) and red box (大臣用的文件匣).D. GreenThe meaning of green in Chinese are much more that in English. Most words about green is created as the development of the history in ancient China. On the contrary, green in English is usually used to indicate objective things and has no relation to history. Although green is used to compose many words concerning the color green inboth Chinese and English, there are still some special meanings of it in the two languages.There are a lot of words about green, which in order to show the situation or events at that time. For example “绿林好汉” is the hero who leaded people to fight against the corrupt government. “青史” is another name of history. Chinese always use “绿/青” in front of a noun in order to compose an objective substance firstly, and then give the word some symbolizing meanings. A green hat(绿帽子), means that wife is treacherous to her husband. “青天” the sky stands for incorrupt officials. There is another a little strange function of green. That is to modify some things which are not green at all. “青丝” isn’t the green silks but our hair. “青红皂白” is not a red or green soap, while it means to judge things without considering of the facts. Green stands for youths, young age, vitality and life, which we can find in both Chinese and English. Green in Chinese is usually used to indicate the wonderful youth time, such as “青春” or the outstanding youth(青出于蓝), while in English the word green has derogatory meaning. For example, “Do you see any green in my eyes?” means that I’m not weak. “A green hand” is the person who has few experiences. Engl ish expresses the jealous with the green in stead of the red, which is opposite with Chinese. Green-eyed monster(红眼病). Similarly English uses the words which has no relationship with the color green to modifier the things that has green surface, such as oasis(绿洲)and emerald(绿宝石).E. YellowThe Chinese have a very complex feeling to the yellow. Chinese not only use it to modifier the best matter but also the worst one. And it is difficult for us to find a neutral meaning word indicated by yellow in Chinese. Comparatively the utilization of the word yellow is quite unitary in English. The people in China regard the yellow as the high-ranking symbols. So it is easy for us to understand why they use yellow to stand for auspiciousness sand prosperity. For example, Golden time(黄金时代) is the period that politics, economy or culture is very flourishing. “黄袍加身” is lik ed to succeed in a coup and gain the power. Surprisingly, yellow is also used to express afail plan or a plan that will never come true, such as “黄了”. An d it also can symbolize the place where the died person would go—“黄泉”. The word yellow is used in totally different way in describing sex. It symbolizes the both opposite sides about sex. “黄色书刊” or “黄色电影” aren’t the books or the movies in yellow cover, while they are filthy books or obscene movies. But the most interesting thing is that Chinese use “黄花闺女” as another name of virgin.In English yellow always symbolizes a despicable person or a nervous little person, such as yellow—belly (可鄙的胆小鬼) and yellow dog (卑鄙的人).F. PurplePurple is a common color in our daily life. And it is known as an exalted and auspicious color. This opinion is agreed with two nation’s folk. A large number of people dream to “marry into the purple”, because it means to marry the king’s son in English. “To raise somebody to the purple” denotes to make somebody an emperor. There is another phrase, “be born in the purple” is indicating born in the royal or distinguished families. Coincidentally, from Tang Dynastic, dignitaries were asked to wear in purple, signifying their lofty status. Moreover, palace of the emperor is called “紫禁城”.G. BlueSome color has no extra symbolic meaning in Chinese, but they do in English. Take blue for example, it usually denote unhappiness and gloom. Such a s “a blue mood” implies in low spirit. “a blue outlook” connotes pessimistic view of life. “Things look blue” means things do not go on well. Besides, noble and strictness are linked with when people mention blue. Members in an illustrious family are calle d “blue blood”. “Blue ribbon” is given to someone who wins the greatest honor. The strict law in English is “blue laws”. But, this color is also used to portray obscene and lewd. For instance, “blue movie” denotes pornographic movies; “blue talk” represent s absence language. These special meanings of blue only exist in English but not in Chinese. But blue also has some same meanings in English and Chinese, such as blue print(蓝图), blue collar(蓝领), blue ribbon(蓝带).Ⅳ.Conclusion:All in all, culture enriches the language; equally, the color words are also enlarged by culture’s development. Color words appear in different history background all tagged with culture. All kinds of color’s association reflect varied nation’s civilization traits in different countries. They help us to understand the feature of a nation, or study its language. There are many mistakes, unhappiness, or misunderstandings during our communicating with foreigners. As long as connect language and culture together, it can be easy and smooth to apply language, even know better about the world. 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