Significance Of The Zodiac Animal Words Mouse Folk Culture

The language of a nation is the essence of its national culture.It propagates the culture of a nation,and propels the development of a nation.In the system of Chinese characters,a large amount of vocabularies,slang and literary works referring to "rat"(or "shu") can be found. As a very important part of this system,those vocabularies referring to the Chinese birth animal sign "rat",to some extent,can embody the Chinese cultural background and explode the true characteristics of Chinese culture.This paper makes a comprehensive discussion in three parts about those words referring to the birth animal sign "rat" and gives the readers a deep analysis of the intonation of those words.PartⅠThe Origin of "Rat" LanguageThis part mainly traces to the origin of single syllable "shu" characters,disyllabic "shu" characters and those vocabularies contain a character "shu".PartⅡSlang Contains the Chinese Character "shu' and the Classification of Those WordsThis part has three branches:slang referring to the "rat" itself as a type of animal;slang referring to the relationship between "rat" and other animals;slang that embody human's impression about "rat".PartⅢThe Significance of Those Slang words Contains "shu"On the basis of partⅠ& partⅡ,the third part makes an intensive analysis of the significance of those slang words referring to "rat" or the Chinese character "shu".For instance,all those Chinese national characteristics such as implicity and honesty,modesty and grace,praying for good things,and splendid philosophical ways of thinking etc.can be obviously told by "shu" languages.