2. The Study of Cultural Connotation on 绿 in Chinese    9
     3. The Similarities and Differences on Green and 绿    9
III. Causes for Similarities and Differences of Basic Color Terms    10
 
3.1 Religion    10
3.2 Custom    11
3.3 National Psychology    12
IV. Conclusion    12
Bibliography    14
Acknowledgments    15
I. Introduction

In Chinese and English languages, the words and phrases of different colors are very abundant. Colors may convey different messages to people of different cultures. Due to the respective cultural background and tradition, some phrases containing color words have far surpassed their original meanings, forming different connotations in cultures. Color terms are playing a more and more important role in human communication. The differences of symbolic meanings are caused by different historical setting, customs, aesthetic attitudes and so on. They are a durable cultural phenomenon throughout the development of human society.  On the one hand, as different people have different historical and cultural backgrounds and different social customs, the referential and pragmatic meanings of color terms may be quite different or even opposite in languages. On the other hand, different people have similarities in thinking and social activities, so they inevitably have similar color-term expressions.
The connotation of the colors is not only an important tool for intercultural communication, but also an important cultural and prominent component of the relationship between the cultural content, and cultural form, between the interdependence and interaction. If a nation’s people do not understand other people’s specific connotation of colors, it is impossible to carry out effective and correct communication. Thus the symbolic meanings of color between Chinese culture and western culture will be quite different from each other. This paper focuses on the words of color and the symbolic meanings of these words between Chinese culture and western culture. It also shows us the comparison between them. We can know that the use of color terms varies from language to language, from culture to culture.  英汉基本颜色词的文化内涵对比研究(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_16822.html