A Comparative Study Of Sino-japanese Idioms Related To "Hand" And "Foot"

Habitual sentence was a prevalent linguistic phenomenon in Chinese and Japanese, with significant cultural and ethnic characteristics. Meanwhile, habitual sentences relevant to human bodies have a large proportion in these two languages. For the alike structure of human bodies, habitual expressions relevant to human bodies in the two languages have a certain similarity. However, cultural differences and different ways of thinking influence people’s perception and experience. Therefore, this study makes a comparison between Chinese and Japanese habitual expressions relevant to human bodies’vocabularies,"feet" and "hands", with a view to probe into the styles and tenses of the habitual sentences in the two languages and compare the similarities and differences between them. This study also looks into differences and similarities in national culture and national psychology through differences and similarities of expressions in the two languages, thus raising more awareness on Chinese and Japanese habitual expressions.In reference to the results from the relevant research, this paper identified the scope of the study the Sino-Japanese idioms related to "hand" and "feet",which is the most representative word of the department of human limbs.200Japanese and261Chinese idioms were collected for comparison. In the research of this paper, the Sino-Japanese idioms on "hand" and "feet" were divided into "corresponding idioms" and "un-corresponding idioms". In the corresponding parts of Sino-Japanese body idioms there are some idioms having the same meaning and expression. There are also some idioms having different expression though their surface meanings are the same as well as some idioms whose main meaning and expression are different though their meanings are partially corresponding. First of all. the thesis generalize the overall corresponding level of Sino-Japanese idioms according to the statistics. Then a comaprison between the corresponding and uncorresponding idioms are conducted one by one to probe into sameness and differences of the meaning and culture of the two languages to summarize some features. Moreover, the reason why the differences are formed will be explained from the cultural, social, custom and ideological perspective.It has a very important significance to study the differences and similarities of these idioms and their different cultural meaning and way of thinking. On one hand, it can deepen our understanding of both languages, and way of thinking in these two languages and two cultures; On the other hand, it is helpful to the teaching and learning of Chinese and Japanese. Furthermore, it has great significance to the translation between these two languages and the compilation of Sino-Japanese and Japanese-Chinese dictionaries.