The Cultural Difference About Animal Idioms in English and Chinese

The Cultural Difference about Animal Idioms in English and Chinese

Animals usually keep a close relation with human beings and influence human’s activity and development deeply. The close relation results in human complex feelings of like or dislike. Also, people often use animals to express their feelings. There are so many vocabularies of animals in both English and Chinese culture. Words usually reflect differences of culture. Because of the influence of history, custom, religion, belief and so on, the two languages, Chinese and English, give their own meanings to animal words. I will contrast the similarities and differences in terms of animal words in English and Chinese.

Animal Word—Dog

Chinese and English people like to have a dog, but the image of the "dog" in both English and Chinese, there are differences. The Chinese have a dog has a long history. In Chinese views, sometimes the dog is dirty and lowly animals, and the image of the dog is often used to describe actions mean bad or ugly bad thing. In Chinese, there are some proverbs like "the dog's mouth emits no ivory", it means A filthy mouth can't utter decent language. Although a dog has advantages of good with the Chinese, such as loyalty, brave, intelligent, I can't put it in China is very important position. While in the west, the dog is "men 's best friend". In English, there are many good words about the dog. Such as: You're a lucky dog. George Bush during the campaign says, "I will put into a campaign to like a dog fight." 

Animal Word—Bat

The bats are mammals, insects such as mosquitoes. In the Western countries, the bat are always linked with darkness. People think "vampire bats" from the grave at night to suck animals’ blood, let a person fear and disgust. Some English idioms also show that for the bat bad associations, such as the As blind as a bat, Crazy as a bat, etc. However, bats in China, due to its pronunciation of "f" word is the same, and therefore is considered a good luck, happiness and longevity and health of our country's traditional picture the bats and deer design together, constitute a bat-deer (pronounced "blessing" in Chinese), bless the people the meaning of riches and happiness.