A Comparative Study Of Chinese And Vietnamese Diet Idioms

Idioms imply the rich historical and cultural information of a country.By understanding the idioms,scholars can understand the language,culture,customs and other conditions of the country.China and Vietnam are neighbors and have close historical coordination;the idioms of the two countries imply their own culture.A comparative study of Chinese and Vietnamese idioms has certain significance for understanding the history,national psychology,language characteristics,and culture of this two countries.This article takes dietary idioms in Chinese and Vietnamese as the research object,and uses general linguistics,cultural linguistics,and comparative linguistics as the basic theories to analyse and summarize the composition,source,rhetoric and cultural meanings of Chinese and Vietnamese dietary idioms.The characteristics of dietary idioms in the two languages reveal the difference and comparability between them.This thesis will help Vietnamese learners understand Chinese idioms and Chinese culture more conveniently and comprehensively,and use Chinese proficiently and accurately.According to language elements,this article divides dietary idioms into four categories:ingredients,finished products,cooking methods,and eating methods.Through word frequency statistics and comparison,it is found that the two countries have their own characteristics in food raw materials(crops,edible livestock and aquatic products,etc.)and other related elements.Vietnam is a region with tropical climate and tropical monsoon climate with agricultural,animal husbandry and fishery product,while China is more abundant in food materials due to its vast territory.The elements in Vietnamese dietary idioms are generally less than those of Chinese dietary idioms.This thesis traces the origins of Chinese and Vietnamese dietary idioms,and analyzes the similarities and differences in the sources of dietary idioms in Chinese culture and Vietnamese culture.In Chinese,most of the idioms are derived from historical legends,cultural works,sentences in ancient books,or introduced foreign cultures and people’s work created by the people;while in Vietnamese,most of the dietary idioms come from the people’s spoken words.historical and cultural works and foreign culture.This thesis analyzes the main meanings,extended meanings,similarities and differences of dietary idioms in Chinese and Vietnamese,and examines the characteristics of this two customs,traditions on life and values reflected in the idioms.This thesis also compares the rhetorical methods used in Chinese and Vietnamese dietary idioms,and finds that the dietary idioms in Chinese and Vietnamese use exaggeration,repetition,metaphor,antithesis,substitution and mixture.Dietary idioms in Chinese use parallelism and comparison which not be used in Vietnamese.