Comparisonand Analysis of Color Expressions between English and Chinese.doc

Comparison and Analysis of Color Expressions between English and Chinese 1. Introduction “Color is a kind of visible quality that objects have, produced by rays of light of different wave lengths being reflected by them”(Oxford 267). It could be found in every corner of human environment. It is the component of totality of human beings’ perceptional experience to the external world, so naturally it forms the eternal topic of each nation. In fact, color was originally a kind of abstract concept and sense perception, and with the development of civilization, human beings cut apart such visual images into many segments and add marks to them, and these marks are also called language. Thus color becomes the concrete thing made up with the separate links. The connection between color and language is a great progress in the human History. It deepened the culture of the whole world, helped to promote the communication among different nations and strengthened the magic of language. Color words are the treasures of human vocabulary. They came from the special civilization and people’s recognition of colors. They have the universals with the color words of other languages, and they also have their own peculiarities in different languages.The paper will try to discuss English and Chinese color words from two respects: comparing the similar and different usage of color words between English and Chinese, and analysising the reasons of the discrepancy. Their universals and peculiarities result from the crisscross network. We can find our color words are abundant and language is marvelous. 2. Comparison between English Color Expression and Chinese Color expression 2.1. Similarities of the two color expressions Human beings live on the same globe. They have common characters. Thus their living and working environment of different parts of the world has much in common. Experiences of the world are in many respects similar. Cultures of various nations also have something simi