中美文化英语

中美文化英语篇一：中西文化差异比较(英文)

The difference between chinese and western culture

With the rapidly challging word, people throughout the world have found it increasingly necessary to minimize the rate of misunderstanding due to miscommunication in their contacts with another. In the oast most human beings were born, lived, and died within a limited geoographical area, never encountering people of other cultural backgrounds. It might be said that technological advances have been most effective in creating the borderless word, the global community. As our world shrinks and its inhabitants become interdependent, people from remot cultures increasingly come into contact on a daily basis. It is no longer hard to find situations in which membes of ince isolared groups of people. Now these people may live thousands of miles away or right next door to each other. So all the people are faced with the challenge of understand this world. So when the east meet west, there are many problems. Some problems are listed as follows.

First of all, the way of eating. All huaman beings have certain basic needs. Our fundamental needs for things that keep us alive. This is the physioligical need. All individuals must eat in order to survive. But what people eat, when they eat, and the manners in which they eat are all patterned by culture. No society views everything in its environment that is edible and might provide nurishment as food. Americans eat oysters but not snail. The French eat snails but not locusts. The Jews eat fish but not pork. The Hindus eat pork but not beef. The Russiand eat beef but not snake. We all have ideas about what kinds of food are good to eat. We also have ideas about what kinds of food are bad to eat. As a result, people from one culture often think the food that people from another culture eat are disgusting or nauseating. Dislike is not the only reason why some culture will not eat a certain food. In some clture, certain foods are taboo. Sometimes the food taboos may be so strong thrat just the thought of eating forbidden foods can cause an indivdual to feel ill. We can also find culture difference in way of bring up children treating the early, greeting each other, saying and spending money before other people do in everyday, but in some English-speaking countries, people do not agree with us. We chinese may enjoy something that is not usually consider as edible by the English-speaking people. Generally we perfer to have thing hot and much emphasis on the taste. We eat from one plate when we are eating with others, and we like to seat one by one, and in the shape of a round. On the opposite, some English-speaking contries, most of the people like to seat in two rows, two people face to face. They have their own plate. On the aspect of table manners, there are many differences between chinese and English-speaking people. For example, in some Englishi-speaking countries, Bread plates are to the left of the main plate, beverage glasses are to the right. Salad fork, knife and soup spoon are further from the

main plate than the main course knife, fork and spoon. When eating bread rolls, break off a piece before buttering. Use the knife only to butter the bread, not to cut it. They should not start eating before your host does or instructs to do so. At larger meals, it is considered okay to start eating once others have been served. When finished, place the knife and fork together at five o’clock with the fork on the left. It is considered rude to answer the telephone at the table. If need to take an urgent call, excuse self and go outside. Try to eat all the food you are served. But in China, the table manners are different. Chinese traditionally eat rice from a small bowl held in the left hand. The rice bowl is raised to the mouth and the rice pushed into the mouth using the chopsticks. Some Chinese find it offensive to scoop rice from the bowl using a spoon. If rice is served on a plate, as is more common in the West, it is acceptable and more practical to eat (转载于:wwW.zHaoQt.NEt 蒲 公 英 文 摘:中美文化英语)it with a fork or spoon. The thumb must always be above the edge of the bowl. The host should always make sure the guests drinks are sufficiently full. One should not pour for ones self, but should offer to pour for a neighbor. When your drink is being poured, you should say "thank you" and tap fingers on the table to show appreciation. When people wish to clink drinks together in the form of a cheer, it is important to observe that younger members should clink the edge of their drink below the edge of an elder to show respect.

Secondly, the way of communication. Form birth to death, communication plays an integral part in our life. There are some language problems, including the different styles of using language such as direct, indirect; expansive, succinct; argumentative, conciliatory; instrumental, harmonnizing; and so on. These different styles can lead to wrong interpretations of intent and evaluation of insincerity, aggreeiveness, deviousness, or arrogance, among other. The misinterpretation nonverbal signs and symbols such as gestures, postures, and other body movements. It is a definite communication barrier. But it is possible to learn the meanings of these observable message,usually in informal rather ways. It is more difficult to understand the less obvious unspoken codes of the other cultures. Language, as the carrier of culture, is created during the process of human beings’ productive labor and serves as the tool of communication to convey the message between people. However, it has been endowed with magic and power in particular language acts. As the old saying goes, troubles come out of the tongue. Superstitious people think that the language itself can bring about fortune or misfortune so that taboos to restrict the use of language are created. Anyone who violates them will get punishment, whereas those who faithfully obey the restrictions of language taboo will get protection. Furthermore, linguistic taboos change with the development of society .The paper firstly analyzes the evolution of linguistic taboo. It is indicated in the paper that linguistic taboo exists in almost every aspect of people’s life and is a universal social phenomenon in China and Britain. Both Chinese and

English cultures are in agreement about linguistic taboos such as pronunciation taboo, and vocabulary taboo. However, influenced by different cultural backgrounds, ideologies and the concepts of value, Chinese and English linguistic taboos also have differences, as is discussed in the paper from the aspects of taboo subjects, taboo numbers and names. At last, this paper puts forward two effective ways of avoiding taboo, that is, using euphemism and having a good knowledge of the taboo culture. And this discussion would help English learners improve their ability of cross-cultural communication and achieve better communicational effects. For example, During the feudal times, people were not equal to the rulers and were suppressed by their superiors. The distinction between the upper and the lower classes was also reflected in the evaluation of the language used by them respectively. The words of upper class used were considered good and elegant while those used by the lower class were regarded as vulgar and indecent and should be avoided in the speech of ladies and gentlemen. In modern society, as a result of the development of science and technology, many natural phenomena are no longer mysterious. Human beings not only constantly improve their abilities to exploit the world where they are living through their great wisdom and knowledge, but also make efforts to explore the extraterrestrial world. Science has much more say in today’s society. Thereby, the superstitious elements in linguistic taboos decrease while those reflecting spiritual civilization increase.

In short, by comparison, we can find that both Chinese and English communication reflect people’s psychology for good will, for safety and fortune and pleasantness. The Chinese and English people restrict their words and deeds through taboos, trying to keep a harmonious relationship between human and nature, or between people and society. They are a reflection of people’s pursuit of freedom and equality.

The most important, the different way of family structure, family values and family education. Family structure is the big difference between east and west, traditional chinese, amony many other Asians, repect their elders and feel a deep sense of duty toward them. Children repay their parents` sacrifices by being successful and supporting them in old age. This is accepted as a natural part of life in China. In contrast, taking care of aged parents is often viewed as a tremendous burden in the English-speaking countries, where aging and family support are not honored highly. In some English-speaking countries are still extrmely family-oriented. They are dedicated to helping their children and will sacrifice greatly for their children to get an edcuation. In turn, the children are devoted to their parents, who often live nearby. Grown children who go away and leave the country for the economic reasons typically send large parts of their salary home to their parents and the rest of the family. Or in some Asia, any decisions or actions are done from family consideration, not individual desires. Peope`s behavior is judged on whether it

brings shame or pride to the family. The children are trained to rely on their families, to honor elderly people, and to fear foreigners. And many of them think that their actions in this life will influence their status in the next life.

The way of family edcation is also the different. We all know the family education is the elementary education for children. Many serious problems have appeared in our education system in recent years. Almost everyone has realized the importance of solving these problems and many people have presented a lot of valuable suggestions. There are many types of family education in the world and each of them shows distinctive features and is closely responsive to its culture. And American family education is the most famous one among them. There are great differences in the concepts of education, methods of education and results of education between East family education and West family education. In some English-speaking countries, parents’ aims are to train their children to have the ability of adapting to environmental variety and the ability of living independently. Based on this concept, most American parents emphasize more to train their children’s ability of independence once they are born. They generally believe that children’s growth must rely on their own experiences, because they think that children should form a self-supporting will and the capacity to live independently since their childhood. And the capacity comes from the training in the early age. The so-called training contains many aspects, such as work, temper will, patience, the spirit of hard work, etc. However, the most fundamental training is the ability of adapting to hard conditions. Through the process of work, children will form the labor sense, learn some work skills and form a habit of labor. Besides, children can learn how to overcome difficulties, temper their willpower, develop their talents and skills, rich their knowledge, and form a habit of hard work and thrifty by working in hard conditions. It is just in the unconsciously process that children will obtain the independent survivability and take the responsibilities for the society. Compared with some English-speaking countries, Chinese parents have a very different concept of children’s education. Some parents in China only care about whether the children have a promising future, a good job, a good life or not. Based on these expectations, the majority of parents feel that their responsibility for their children is to create as good conditions as possible they can so that the children will not worry about anything in the future. Chinese parents would like to provide everything what they can for their children in the process of children’s growth. In short, they would like to sacrifice anything if their children can live better with their help. Therefore, in the process of children’s growth, the most important thing the parents concerning is to developing their children’s intellect, except for caring children’s daily life. In order to make their children have a good performance in study, become outstanding, or even become a famous person in the future, they would not let children do anything except studying. As for the children’s independence, civic awareness and their ability adapting to the

society in the future, they consider little or not at all. From these aspects we can find the obvious differences of family education between America and China.

When we faced with those difference between West and East, we should give some advice to solve these problems. According to the three big difference that pointed, we should find some way to deal with these problems.

We can study other languages and learn to expect in nonvwebal forms and other cultural aspects. We can train ourselves to meet intercultural encounters with more attention to situation details. We can use an investigative approach rather than stereotypes and preconceptions. We can gradually expose ourselves to differences so that they become less threatening. We can even learn to lower our tension level when needed to advoid triggering defensive reactions. The overall goal should be to achieve intercultural communication competence.

So the ideal solution to reduce the problems are to share knowledge with others in communication. This is why it is easiest to communicate with other members of the same group. This is why people so often gather together socially with others who are very much like them. Since intercultural communication is communication with members of different cultual groups, and therefore, because we do not share knowledge, assumptions, values, and forms of discourse with them, we must expect there to be problems of interpretation. We must look for these problems, anticipate where they will arise out of our differences, and then plan our aommunications to be as effective as possible.

However, we have to remember that, most of the time, the different ways that are the customs of dfferent cultures are neither right nor wrong. It is simply that different people do the same tings in different manners, even though we can not understand ,we should show the respect. I believe this is the best way to make our life become more comfortable and make the world more harmonious.

中美文化英语篇二：中美文化差异英语作文

Differences Between Chinese Culture and American Culture

I have been living in China for twenty years. I was born in JiangSu province, and also grew up in there. My family members were from different parts of China. My mom’s hometown is at the Huabei plain which is the north side of The Yellow River. However, my father grew up in Nanjing, the famous city which locates beside the Yangzi River.

Most of people in southern China are used to have rice as their daily main food resource, but northern China mostly has wheat. But no matter which part of China, meat is not the major food for us. Chinese people always believe that rice, wheat, vegetable, fruit are the best for our health. In contrast, meat would give more troubles to our health, for example, heart attack, high blood pressure, and etc.

But people in America, mostly have meat as their food resource. The most important is that they mostly have beef, chicken, shrimp, turkey, instead of pork and lamb. In restaurants, you can easily find hamburger, steak, ribs with a little rice and a piece of bread. I believe that the food style gives American people much more energy than we have. They are much stronger than us. That is the fact!

I have heard of an interesting story about Yao Ming, who is one of the famous NBA player right now. During his first season in NBA, millions of people are attracted by his height and his cute smile. However, he is not strong enough to play NBA game yet! He ever told the reporter that he likes to have soup that his mom makes for him. Soup could not help him, only steak, cheese, butter could make him stronger and gives him more energy. In order to increase his competition, he has to be used to American food style!

“Custom is the great guide of human life”, wrote Scottish philosopher David Hume. Knowing the customs of a country is, in effect, a guide to understanding the soul of that country and its people. As a foreign language leaner, we should know the culture in our target language’s country. Only in this way, we can really learn the language well.

People express their culture through traditions in food, clothing, recreation, and ceremonies; through the education system and institutions of learning, including museums and libraries; and through the arts, encompassing the visual, literary, and performing arts. As a result, we will talk about the differences from some aspects.

First, I will mention the addressing. In China, we will put the family names before our given names, and then in order to express our politeness, we would like to add “sir” or “lady” or their title after the name. On contrast, in America, people would like to put their family names after their given names and first names and they will put Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms, Dr. or

Prof. before their names. It is foremost and first for us to know these differences so that we won’t make misunderstandings.

And then we will talk about time conceptions. In America, their living beat is quite fast, so they consider time is quite precious. So, when they accept an invitation, they would try their best not to be late, but they also don’t go early to the inviters’, as this is considered to be impolite, and it seems to disturb the inviters’ preparation. In China, we should also not be late for the inviters. However, in order to show our thanks and politeness, we would go to the inviters’ house to help them prepare the meals and then we will have a happy time together.

To open a conversation, people in different countries have different ways. In China, when people meet their friends by chance, they will say.” Where are you going?” or “ have you eaten?” and then they will go on talking about other things. But if you do this in America, you will be misunderstood that you want to invite him or her. Americans would like to say,” beautiful day, isn’t it?” to open a conversation even sometimes it is raining. It is not because the Americans can predict the weather but for the sake of customs.

Let me come to the aspect of eating. Chopsticks are used for all meals in China. Food is placed at the center of the table and may include more than one type of main dish to be eaten with rice. All the food will be shared by all the persons and won’t be divided into several helps. While in America, they would use forks and knives for their meals. Every person has his own dishes and they won’t share one dish together. They think this is quite hygienic and they will enjoy their meals comfortably. However, what they eat is not so healthy, because they would like to eat a lot of meat and something with high calorie. Maybe it is good for them to obtain more fibers and keep a healthy body.

Finally, I would like to mention something about the difference in marriage. Besides the ceremony for marriage has obvious difference----Americans will hold it in a church, while Chinese will hold it in a hotel inviting their relatives and friends to have dinner----their marriage notion has quite a lot of differences, too.

From all these aspects, we can think of many differences in values, such as the notion of social statues, collectivism and socialism, the treatments to children and so on. In fact, we cannot say which one is right, which one is wrong, as we all know Americans and Chinese are not in the same group, people on the opposite side of the globe can never achieve the thousandth part of the group on the other side of the globe. What we should do is to learn the difference, and then we can really learn the difference well.

中美文化英语篇三：英语作文-东西方文化差异 -Cultural differences

Cultural differences

There are plenty of. people in the world. They come from different countried, have their

own race, belief and way of life. What is more, their culture is different from others'. So,

there is no doubt that cultural difference exist among lots of countries, especially between

eastern and western countries.

Compared with the way of life, eastern people always have a bath in the evening or at

night in order to relax themselves after one-day's hard work while western people take a

bath in the morning. so as to keep freshly for the whole day. In general, it is true,

especially for Chinese people. We, Chinese people would like to take baths at night rather

than in the morning. It is a kind of habits we behave all the time.

Compared with the relationships, differences are as follow: firstly, eastern people like to

make friends, sometimes through their friends, parents, relatives. While western people

behave a little shyly. They do not want to make friends all the time. Secondly, eastern

people would like to hang out with the person they do not know about quite a lot. while

western people just like going out with the person whom they get along well with.

Finally, eastern people have much more friends than western people for their quite

different way of getting along with. their friends. There is no doubt that eastern people

are more outgoing than western people, so I agree with these a lot.

As for way of solving problems, eastern people always deal with things indirectly. They

pay much attention to many things around them, and always work for a long time to solve

the problem. However, western people just go straight the heart of the problem and solve

it directly and efficiently. As far as I am concerned, this difference between eastern and

western people is quite normal and correct. Eastern people, especially Chinese people

care about things around them a lot, they always want to satisfy everyone's need, so that

they spend much more time to solve a problem than western people.

As for way of thinking, people in eastern areas usually think indirectly. They used to

think about the things around them a lot and try to deal with things in a reasonable even

perfect way. However, in comparison with the eastern people, people in the western areas

often think directly. They pay less attention to the things around them and care much

more about themselves. Honestly speaking, I disagree to this.In my opinion, everyone is

special and has their right and obligations to do things. There is no need for us to critise

others and what we should do is to respect their own. decision.

There are a lot of differences between eastern and western culture. These are the symbols

of their own characteristics and we need time to dig out more differences so as to learn

more about them. Most importantly, we must respect their culture firstly!