【Talk about English】 我们究竟是什么 (Episode3-4/6)

英语自学网

        文化和语言有什么关系？本期主播Marc Beeby认为应当把语言当做是文化的基础，并且发现原来世界各地的人都是用不同的方式来描绘同一个世界的。一起来听听吧。
       

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        Dr George Zhang

        英式拼写
全文听写   
As I said earlier, it's natural for us to think that people from other cultures use language in the same way that we do. This is because, in the same way that we are born into a culture and accept its ways of doing things without thinking, so we are also born into a language - and we accept the way it represents life and experience as normal. And because we think of it as normal, we don't notice that our native language actually affects the way we see the world. Here's Dr George Zhang with an example of how the Chinese language both represents and influences Chinese culture.
I think that the Chinese language helps people to visualise whereabout they should be in the society and how they should behave - you are taught ever since you start to speak the language to follow certain kinds of rules. You're taught to understand individual bit doesn't make a lot of sense unless you are member of a community - a family to start with, a community to go beyond it and the language reflects this process. Writing an envelope is a very easy example. If you want to write to somebody in English you would say the name of the receiver - so and so - and then the number of the house and then you got a street and the district and the city and then finally the country. Well in Chinese it's the other way round. You start with the country and then go into the city and go in district and then the street, number of the house and person who receives the letter. In the Chinese language, the person, individual doesn't make any sense unless it is in the context. So the culture and the language in many ways I think they are interrelated.