老鼠过街，人人喊打
When a rat runs across the street everybody cries, "kill it!"
In English, the word mouse doesn’t have so many negative meanings as the Chinese character 鼠does. At the very beginning, it was the symbol of timid and weakness, which has the same cultural connotation with that in Chinese. In modern cartoon films, mouse is the brave fighter to defeat the cat.
From the folk, we can see how shrewd the mouse is in human beings’ mind. On the other hand, mouse lives in obscure corner to secretly eat people’s food. So the word mouse is always associated with derogatory sense, such as timid, suspicious, and narrow-minded.
As a part of culture, language is the carrier, the accumulation, and reflection of culture in the mean time. Language and the cultural information it contained show people the nation’s culture background. It can well be perceived by the comparative study of the Animal Signs’ cultural connotation in Chinese and English.
Same Байду номын сангаасnimal words, different connotations in Chinese and English Cultures
Since Chinese and English focus on different aspects of the characteristics of the animal, the connotations of animal words in the two cultures are not always the same. In another words, sometimes the meanings are quite different.
But to the westerners, associations with dragon are all negative. It is the personification of monster that has awful appearance. It is said that the dragon is a huge lizard which have wings and squamae, and it can breathe out fire. Dragon is the symbol of vileness in that it may do harm to the people by burning and deluging people’s houses as well as
In China, there are many folks about how the mouse became the leader of the Twelve Animal Signs. The most popular folk is that the God held a running race and the one who first reached the finishing line would be the leader. On the way, the mouse persuaded the ox to let him on its back by tricks. When the ox was about to reach the finishing line, the mouse slid from the ox’s nose and he became the winner.
Therefore, the mouse now shares the image of bravery, smart, loveliness, such as Mickey Mouse in Mickey and Donald Duck, Jerry in Tom and Jerry, and Stuart Little.
Dragon shares the image of authority and inviolability in Chinese culture. In feudal society, the emperors always declared themselves to be the sons of dragons. All the things they used were with the designs of dragons and were named with dragon。
eating people and other animals.
To most Chinese, dog is considered as an unpleasant animal that has derogatory connotation. No Chinese would like to be called a dog. So when to admire someone the expression you are a lucky dog should be changed into you are so lucky.