The Chinese Color Words Cultural Connotation Contrast Research, And Teaching Strategies

Language is the carrier of culture. The color word is part of the language. People’slives are full of different colors. The wonderful surrounding nature is colorful. Color wordsdescribe the surrounding world. Each color word brings a variety of it’s making thelanguage more vivid and more full of life. The color words define imaging and emotions in thesurrounding world. Different cultural backgrounds have different color thesaurus thatreflect the different cultural connotations. Every language has its own way of describing anddefining the love, emotions, expressions, and messages using color words.Vietnam and China are neighboring countries. Vietnam, in most aspect, is influencedby Chinese language. Especially, the ancient Vietnamese were recording their own historyin ancient Chinese language. Therefore, Vietnam language and culture has a lot of similaritieswith China—the color words are no exceptions. Existing inconsistencies between Vietnamand China are due to the long historical development of traditions, culture, differentsocial status, and geographical environment—this includes the connotations of color words.This article studies the comparative cultural connotations. Then it finds the similaritiesand differences between Chinese “Red”,“Green”(blue),“Yellow”,“White”,“Black”,“Purple”,“Gray” seven color words and Vietnamese “o”,“Xanh”,“V ng”,“Tr ng”,“en”,“T m”,“X m”. After much research and investigation ofVietnamese learners of Chinese language, it was found that the Vietnamese UniversityDepartment of Chinese language of Chinese cultural connotations of color words knowledgedo not provide enough knowledge to their students, therefore, students must perform self-study to gain more knowledge. As I will be a Chinese teacher, I will take the liberty to preparea lesson plan to explain the cultural connotation of knowledge of Chinese Color Words. I wishmy research can be used in the teaching process. I intend to provide theability on the part of the culture of Chinese language while teaching in Vietnam.