Cultures Approach to Color Words in English and Chinese 英语毕业论文.doc

Cultures Approach to Color Words in English and Chinese Ⅰ.The classification of color words. On account of natural true quality, the classification of English and Chinese color words and the meaning of words are unanimous on the whole. According to a scientific research, it is undeniable that except color blindness there isn’t any difference when people distinguish colors. Meanwhile, people in different culture show no difference in perceiving or telling different colors. After studying no less than one hundred languages, some scholars make a conclusion that any kind of language existing in the world has a certain amount of color words. Yet, the appellations of colors in the languages are limited in terms of few (no more than one hundred) basic color words (single-morpheme color words). In consequence, the majority of colors are formed by adding modifiers to basic color words, such as apple green, grey blue, deep blue and so on. Linguists Berlin and Kay(1969), who have studied color words for several years, put forward a theory that there are eleven basic color words(main color words) in the world: black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and grey. Meanwhile, there are also a great number of secondary color words, such as golden, silver, ruby, indigo, agate, scarlet, cerise, magenta, sanguine, ebony, rosy, beige, azure, russet, apricot, melon, fawn, ochre, chartreuse and so on. The quantity of basic color words also reflects the developing stages of the language. There are only two color words in some languages in Africa, which indicates that their languages are still at primary stage. At the same time, linguistic groups divide English and Chinese color words into three classifications: basic color words; color words with color of objects; color words in shades. Though some similarities exist when words are used in English and Chinese, there are more differences due to both the language and the cultural factors such as history, culture, cu