A Study Of Language Culture Of Chinese Animal Idioms

When we were teaching Chinese as a second language to foreign students or having a talk with them in Chinese, we often found that the errors of using Chinese idioms, especially Chinese animal idioms they made were very often. And Chinese animal idioms were very hard to learn. Meanwhile, we noticed that the cultural meanings’analysis about Chinese animal idioms that the Chinese textbooks have are fragmented and haven’t formed the system. Therefore in order to make the students grasp Chinese animal idioms correctly, and understand the language culture of them, we collected a lot of data about Chinese animal idioms, and systematic integrated, classified and studied them one by one, according to the achievements we have got. By doing this, we want to offer some help to those who learn Chinese animal idioms.This essay takes the animal idioms as our research subject, cites every idiom that has the animal names in Hanyu Chengyu Kaoshi Cidian, counts them and classifies them. On the counting basis, we classify and sort six categories as12zodiac symbols, four Deities-Symbol, birds, beasts, aquarium animals and insects to study the meanings of animal idioms, and meanwhile analysis and explain the rhetorical culture, historical sources and cultural implications about both the important and difficult animal idioms.Through the discussion of this essay, we make further sense of the characteristics about the semantic structures and cultural implications of animal idioms which are the special group of Chinese idioms. Animals host unique and great historic cultural implications and they have a kind of regularity. If we grasp the cultural implications that the animal idioms have, we will take the golden key of unlocking the mysteries of Chinese animal idioms into our hands, which benefits the Chinese teaching, especially the teaching Chinese as a second language.