Comparative Study Of Japanese Four-character Idioms And Chinese Four-word-phrase

According to Modern Chinese Dictionary(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Languages institute),proverbs means set phrases that have used for a long time with certain structure and special meanings.Most of the time,they are consisted of four characters.Proverbs are the essence of our culture and history while languages are continuously changing.Meanwhile,as an important symbol of languages,proverbs have crucial roles in expressing.When people create art or communicate,the usage of proverbs makes languages simple,keeps deep understanding of languages and gets exquisite style.In Japanese,there are also similar four-character proverbs as Chinese.The similarity helps two languages’ further communication.However,as time goes,culture differences and living environment result in changes in figure and meanings.Therefore,it’s meaningful to compare four-character proverbs between Chinese and Japanese.Moreover,the result will benefit interpretation and education between China and Japan.This paper is based on the research of same-figure but different meaning phases in Chinese four-character proverbs and Japanese four-character set phrase.Through comparing meaning,usage and analyzing the reasons for forming differences and similarities,this paper tries to explore the differences and similarities in two countries’culture.The content of this paper as followings:The first chapter is introduction.It introduces this paper’s purpose,meaning,research subject,method and previous research.The second chapter analyzes the definition,scope,and origin of both Japanese and Chinese four-character proverbs.The third chapter focuses on phrases of same figure but different meaning.This chapter selects some phrases with certain requirements and categorizes them according to their differences.The fourth chapter is concentrated on special figures and forming reasons of each unit of same figure but different meaning phrases.The purpose is to further understand the similarities and differences of two countries’ culture.The last chapter is the conclusion.In short,due to the mutual influence between Japanese culture,four character idioms and Chinese four character idioms have many similarities in expression and significance.The similarities and differences between the natural,social,cultural and religious elements of different countries form the basis of their respective linguistic systems.