Language and culture are closely related. China and English-speaking countries living in different cultural background have come very naturally to produce different association of the same animal words in the two languages. The different cultural background gives more rich cultural connotations to animal words. The vocabulary of a language reflects the differences of the cultural development. Because of the influence of history, customs, values, religious beliefs and other aspects of cultural factors, the differences of the two languages give animal words in their particular cultural connotation. 源'自:751-'论/文'网"www.751com.cn

This article is about searching Chinese and English cultural differences in terms of animal words in English and Chinese. It will pay more attention to the animal words. The cultural differences will pide into four parts in this article: historical differences, geographical differences, custom differences, aesthetic value differences. Then some suggestion for English learning will be given.

2. Literature Review

Animal words in English and Chinese stem from the different historical context, social activities, customs, religions, tradition, environments and so on. They reflect the difference between these two kinds of cultures. So many researchers want to find their relations. There are some points which listing in the follow:

Liao Guangrong thinks that there are three points about the basis of the animal words has cultural significance. Firstly, animal’s appearance, physiology, psychology, personality, behavior, habits, role and other characteristics. Secondly, Nation’s cultural contents, cultural traditions and cultural psychology. Including myth, religion, legend, history, literature, art, language, geographical environment, customs, ethics, thinking, Aesthetic tastes and so on. Third is association. Association refers to relate the animal with another thing. And the tradition of national culture, especially cultural psychology has the important role to stimulate and guide the production of the association (Liao Guangrong, 2000: 23). 

Ding Feifei thinks that animal’s cultural meaning is the meaning that produced from the variance of social culture. This culture is the extended meaning, metaphorical meaning, associative meaning, symbolic meaning, emotion color, and style color of words that society gives (Zhang Liping, 2007: 8). 

3. Cultural Differences between Chinese and English 

China and English-speaking countries, living in different natural environments, have different histories and form different culture. In this chapter, the author lists the cultural differences between Chinese and English from the aspect of history, geography, custom and aesthetic value, in order to better analyze the contents in the next chapter.

3.1 Historical Differences

Each nation has its own unique history, which affects the culture of theirs. Meanwhile the history is an important part and factor of each nation’s culture. Difference of the historical culture thought reflects the national characteristics inevitably. China is a country with ancient civilization of five thousand years. Chinese historical philosophy mainly takes the Confucianism as the basic skeleton and mixed with Taoism before 1840. While the Christianity and the western philosophy is the main body of the English culture. Because of the different religious beliefs, the Chinese and the English also have the difference in the aspect of the word connotations.