Chinese Color Words In Mongolia A Semantic Contrast

No language of a nation in the world is created in one day and language is an integreted system of phonetics, sementics, lexicon and grammar, created collectively by people generation after generation. No language can exist beyond culture, in another word, language and culture share fairly close relations with each other. Langauge is the carrier of culture, influenced by and reflect culture. Language shows the cultural characters of a nation and therefore any language of a nation carries the most sophisticated part of culture itself. Language manifests the features of the nation, including national cultual lexicon and national cultural connotation which have close relevance to its national culture. Although National cultral lexicon has national cultural connotation which is the embodiment of the national culture, they are still categorized as language units and national cultural semantics is still semantics. Hence national cultural semantics is a branch of semantics in the field of linguitics. It explores the national cultural connotation which is the embodiment of the national culture. Proffessor Wang Dechun defines it in the following way, "National cultural connotation is the manifestation of the natural cultural semantic character in the language which reflects the history, customs and habits of the nation and is of rich taste of that nation's culture. It is the additional cultural connotation of a linguistic unit on the basis of the reflection of its conceptual meaning. Without the national and cultural background, it will be hard to understand the meaning of the language unit". National cultral lexicon mostly are words of basic categories. They are the most frequently used words and they fall in three different categories: words shared by all cultures, such as, lexems of animals, plants, implement, numbers, positions,natural beings, proper names and colors, etc; words belong to a particular culture, such as lexmes of national culture, customs and living habits and religions; words used in daily greetings.The world human beings are living in is a colorful one. The seas are blue, the fields are green and the blood is red. All of these are undeniable existences while they are also the perception of all human beings at the same time. Color is the most magnificent gift of nature and this beautiful eco-biological enviroment is composed of sudstances of different colors. Nature comes into our horizons in the form of color in the first place and help to construct all kinds of worlds in our minds. Naturally, words which are used to refer to colors appeared accordingly in the language and have abundent meanings of culture. For the reason that we come from different cultural background, the color words in our languages reflect different meanings of cultre. By means of comparing the national cultural connotation of color words in languages of different nations, we are able to understand the distinctive features of the history, culture, tradition, custom, living habits, world views and values of those nations.There are abundant color words which have a air of emotion and cultural meaning both in Mogolian and Chinese. The difference between the cultural meaning of those color words in these two languages is caused by different social and cultrual backgrounds of these two nations and shows the cultral psychology from one perspective. The differences between the two nations in geography, environment, national history, morality and beliefs, customs and living habits, values, ways of thinking, all cause the fact that for the same color words, the national cultural semantics are different. However, both of Mogolia and China are oriental countries and have been influencing each other in many aspects and it is nothing surprising that we find color words in these two languages share the same national cultural connotation. By the contrast of those two languages, we are enabled to find the similarities and dissimilarities of the national cultural connotation of color words in these two languages. And it is very meaningful to apply the results of the research to the field of mutual translation, language teaching and cross-cultrual communication. Translation is the transformation of the information one language carries to another language. In tramsforming, the key is national cultural lexicon. For a perfect transformation, one is required to understand the national cultural connotation of one language and which means an understanding of the cultural meaning the language carries.Theories on cultures and the teaching of it are a must for the second language teaching. Hence, we shoud attach much importance to culture teaching in TCFL, particularly, the teaching of those words which carry national cultural connotations. By involving national cultural semantics in teaching, students are enabled to understand the cultural features of the target language and therefore improve accuracy and appropriateness. In other words, national cultural connotation teaching can optimize the learners' knowledge of the taget nation and communication competence, as well.In cross-cultrual communication, words which carry national cultural connotation always become an obstacle in acquisition. People from different cultures should pay much attention to the national cultural connotation of the target language, otherwise misunderstanding is hard to be voided. Hence, when a language learner or culture transmittor is in communication with someone from a totally different background, he should have some knowledge of the national cultural semantics in that language and compare them in details. The better the understanding of this, the more successful the communication will be.