Interesting Talk on Language: Comparing Chinese and English with Chinese and Western Thinking and Cultural Differences

Language, thinking, and culture have a great influence on each other. From the comparison of Chinese and English languages, it is a very interesting topic to see the differences between Chinese and Western thinking styles and cultures.

The Chinese focus on image thinking and dialectical thinking, while the West focuses on abstract thinking and logical thinking. Reflected in language, Chinese is more vague and ambiguous than English, and often requires the help of context and cultural context. English is more logical and precise. Chinese people like to use the law of isomorphism in their thinking, and use analogy more in language, and rarely use the three-stage formula of formal logic. As long as two classes of things are listed as being isomorphic, it is possible to assert common properties of the two classes. Therefore, rhetoric such as metaphors, imagery, and comparisons are often used in Chinese literature (such as Guan Guan Jujiu, in the river continent. A fair lady, a gentleman likes a good man). Chinese analogy violates the law of identity in terms of formal logic and replaces concepts secretly, which is tantamount to sophistry in the eyes of Western formal logic. But the Chinese say that we are a higher level of dialectical thinking.

Chinese people's isomorphism in thinking and pursuit of harmony in culture are reflected in the Chinese language, which emphasizes the antithesis of words and sentences, and pays attention to symmetry. , Dual parallelism, and syllables are well-proportioned. For example, double-syllable words refer to two syllables with the same initial consonants concatenated into words (happy, fresh), repetitious words refer to two syllables with the same final consonants concatenated into words (calm, lingering), and repetitious words (gradually), reflecting the meaning of syllables and words coordination, harmony and symmetry. In Chinese vocabulary, I like to use homogeneous mergers: ice and snow, animals, tables and chairs, learning, mind, etc.; I like to use overlapping words for rendering, or to strengthen the tone, and I like to use parallel sentences to enhance the effect. English doesn't like repetition very much, especially the same syllables, words or sentence patterns. Therefore, double tones are relatively rare in English, and there are very few redundant words (such as walkie-talkie), and redundant words are even less used than in Chinese.

Chinese can save as much as possible, and has the simplicity of expression. It comes from the complex structure of pictographs, and it must express many meanings with a small number of words. In particular, hieroglyphs cannot express abstract words and must be expressed through association. There are relatively few abstract words in Chinese. Many modern abstract words are foreign words, such as world, science, reason and concept. There is no word corresponding to "size" in Chinese. There is also no expression corresponding to the suffix "ness" in English. Therefore, there is no "whiteness" in Chinese - only swan-like whiteness and snow-whiteness. Chinese is concise but prone to ambiguity. Especially in ancient times, there were no punctuation marks to break sentences, which lacked precision and were not suitable for scientific and logical thinking. This is also one of the reasons why exact science started relatively late in China.

The West's emphasis on formal logic is also reflected in English's emphasis on form. Rigid grammar rules must be followed. Must have complete grammatical means and forms. Subject-verb agreement, tense agreement. Chinese, on the other hand, attaches great importance to meaning and meaning, and attaches great importance to vocabulary, unlike the West which attaches great importance to grammar. English emphasizes structure, while Chinese emphasizes semantics. English relies on various tangible connection means to achieve the integrity of grammatical structure, and uses connection words (such as and, but, so, however) and relative words (such as that, which, what, how, where) to express logical relations, Prepositions (such as of, in, on, about), etc. While Chinese is a semantic language, the grammatical relationship is mainly reflected through the word order, focusing on the use of word meanings to achieve coherence. The character structure of Chinese has no morphological changes, no relational words, and much fewer auxiliary words between sentence components, which are mainly connected by the meaning of content words and word order, so language is directly linked to meaning. English has many long sentences, subordinate clauses, and compound sentences, while Chinese often uses short sentences, simple sentences, and clauses. The former is complex, compact in structure, and lacks flexibility. The latter structure is loose and elastic. Chinese is a language that attaches great importance to context, and the connection between front and back is mainly realized through the logical meaning of the context.

There is no subjunctive in Chinese, which reflects that Chinese people like positive thinking and don't use counterfactual thinking very much. There is an experiment, when the teacher narrates a story in subjunctive mode and asks whether the event happened, 98% of the American students gave the correct answer: it did not happen. Only 7% of Chinese students answered correctly. There is no subjunctive in Chinese, which makes it impossible to easily distinguish the imaginary false world. Chinese thinking emphasizes subjectivity. Western thinking emphasizes objectivity. Chinese thinking is mostly human-centered, forming a human-centered way of thinking about things. This difference in thinking has led to the fact that people are often used as subjects in Chinese and things are often used as subjects in English. Chinese likes to use the active voice; English often uses the passive voice.

The Chinese pay attention to collective interests and overall value, while the West emphasizes individual value. In English, I will always be capitalized. In Chinese, there are many humble words for me: despicable, humble, servant, stupid, clumsy, minister, poor person, etc. Chinese people like to say "We think..."; while Anglo-Americans often say "My opinion is...". The Western context often comes from the self, and the Chinese context often comes from the other party: the same modest sentence Chinese say "You (first) please", while in English it is "After you!"

The Chinese distinguish time from the past, while the British and Americans distinguish time from the future. Back and forward are used in English to refer to past and future time. In Chinese, "前" refers to the past, and "Hou" refers to the future. For example, in Tang poetry, "the past does not see the ancients, and the future does not see those who come." Chinese is more refined in the concept of time, distinguishing the day before yesterday, yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. However, there are only yesterday, today and tomorrow in English words.

There are many and detailed titles for relatives in Chinese, which reflects the Chinese people's emphasis on the concept of family, and the distinction between seniority and inferiority of relatives. In English, only gender is distinguished, not seniority, and there is no subdivision between patrilineal and matrilineal. English can use the method of adding names to relatives, such as "Uncle Tom", but it is not allowed to call elders by their names directly in Chinese.

The distinction between countable nouns, material nouns and abstract nouns in English reflects the emphasis on the classification of objects in Western thinking. Compared with Chinese, the number of shape words in English is astonishing, about 10,000.

In terms of thinking habits, Chinese people emphasize synthesis, while Westerners emphasize analysis. There are about 3,000 basic words in Chinese. Through the combination of these Chinese characters, you can read ordinary books and newspapers. However, the vocabulary of an ordinary high school graduate in the United States is roughly 45,000 words, and more basic words need to be mastered.

Culturally, China has the same name, and Britain and the United States have the same quality. English works are more casual about the title, thinking it is just a label, often very concise, and even use names of people and places; such as "Iliad", "Odyssey", movie titles such as Seven, Ghost, Speed, Forest Gump, Leon, Waterloo Bridge, etc. However, Chinese is more headline party, and likes to make the headlines show a little bit of meaning, and catch the attention from the headlines. Corresponding to the Chinese translation of the above movie titles are The Seven Deadly Sins, The Love between Humans and Ghosts, Speed ​​of Life and Death, Forrest Gump, This Killer is not too cold and soul-stirring.