Contrast Of Arabic-Chinese Idioms And Strategies Of Teaching Chinese Idioms As A Foreign Language

Arabs and Chinese are both long-established peoples. During the course of their historical development, the collisions and exchanges between their cultures set off a mutual development in both cultures’ languages. In the few recent years, many Arab people have developed a deep interest in studying Chinese,thereby allowing the “Chinese language craze”to emerge in Arabic countries and causing the study of Chinese to enter into a new phase, spurring the teaching of Chinese language to a higher level.“Idioms”(four-character Idioms) are a characteristic and inseparable part of the Chinese language. Their use is extensive in both written and oral Chinese. Idioms are set phrases that convey a particular meaning used by people in everyday situations. There is a close relationship between Arabic and Chinese Idioms. Using them appropriately helps to reduce obstacles in communication, and furthermore to help people communication more closely.This thesis aims to compare the grammatical structure and cultural aspects of Arabic and Chinese Idioms, and attempts to find ways in which they influence each other. On the basis of relevant theories from contrastive linguistics, it provides a comparative study of Arabic and Chinese Idioms, and summarizes their characteristics and contributing factors.On the basis of the differences in compositional form and cultural meaning discovered, the thesis seeks to strengthen Arabic foreign students’ understanding of Chinese culture and Chinese Idioms, and furthermore seeks to help them to overcome some difficulties in the incorrect use of Idioms in terms of grammatical structure, as well as to provide some advice for teaching Chinese as a foreign language and for the Idioms compose in the teaching Chinese materials.This thesis has six main parts:The first part explains the trends in the comparative research on Arabic and Chinese Idioms.The comparative study of Arabic and Chinese Idioms is a completely new field: scholars mainly undertake comparisons from a cultural perspective.The second part delineates and defines the scope of Arabic and Chinese Idioms and summarizes their characteristics and origins. Through this comparison the author has discoveredthat the differences between Arab and Chinese history and culture, environment and lifestyle have led to a diversity in Arabic and Chinese Idioms.The third part is a contrastive analysis between Arabic and Chinese Idioms. Chinese contains a subject and a predicate, and there are six kinds of Chinese sentence structures, while the two main types of Arabic sentences are structured around nouns and verbs. Chinese Idioms are mainly composed of four characters; Arabic Idioms have no set number of words. While the meaning of Arabic Idioms is clear and easy to understand, the meaning created by the relationship of the words in Chinese Idioms is relatively obscure.The fourth part analyzes the cultural meaning of Arabic Idioms and Chinese Idioms. This thesis compares Arabic and Chinese Idioms from the three aspects of social life, cultural customs and religious belief. Because of differences in social and cultural life, Chinese Idioms have characteristics from agricultural and land-based life, whereas Arabic Idioms have characteristics of desert and agricultural life. The differences in the two peoples’ cultural customs caused them to have different knowledge based on different understandings. In terms of religious belief, the basics of Chinese religious beliefs are mainly based on Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism,while the beliefs of the Arab people are mainly based on Islam. The two different foundations of religious belief have left a different mark on the Idioms of these two peoples.Based on the contrastive analysis outlined above, the fifth part makes some relevant suggestions for the teaching of Chinese Idioms, especially aimed at the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in Arab countries. The first is to pay attention to the structural difference of Chinese and Arabic Idioms while teaching; the second is to pay attention to the cultural differences; and the third is to pay attention to the possibility of using methods of translating grammar. Beside that, makes some relevant suggestions for the compose of Idioms in the Chinese materials in the Arabic countries.The sixth part summarizes the main points of the thesis, and points out its limitations, and describes the follow-up research of the author.