What Makes Differences Between Chinese and Americans?
As an international student from China, I used to experience huge difficulties in translating my opinions from Chinese to English words when I was writing essays. Even though I wrote out my words in English, some word choices may not have exactly described what I want to express and even distorted my original ideas. The disparity in the meaning of similar words from different languages can be concluded as a part of cultural differences that result from people’s different thinking patterns. Actually, the distinction in the mode of thinking between Chinese and Americans not only influences their written language but the cultures, including their etiquette, as a whole.
Affected by Confucian thought, Chinese people often maintain moderate viewpoints towards some issues and stress the interests of the group. Generally, in order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and quarrels, as well as unintentional harm on others, Chinese people would not like to express personal perspectives with strong emotions in the public and prefer to hide their true feelings in the hearts. That is to say that Chinese people are more likely to consider others’ feelings and may sacrifice their interests to maintain harmonious social relationships with others. However, individualism is more likely to be emphasized in American thinking pattern. Because of their straight forward mode of thinking, most American people I met love to express their opinions and complaints directly from their minds and pay more attention to how the environments affect their feelings. For example, my American roommate once asked me to take out the trash because she did it for the last time and she thinks that it is unfair for her to do it again. Even though I was busying with my statistics homework and she is relaxing on the bed, she said she has no time to do it. In Chinese culture, people would like to protect friendly relationships with others and hardly require others to do something for them if they are available. Even though some people’s behaviors may slightly affect their interest, most Chinese people would not haggle over every point with others and choose to ignore the problem. Apparently, the divergence leaves between Chinese and American cultures leads to Chinese and American different thinking patterns and their behaviors.
In spite of cultural etiquette, the different mode of thinking also reflects on the style of written language. Shaped by the thousand years of history and cultures, Chinese written language stresses the effectiveness of conveying emotion and atmosphere. Chinese people prefer to employ a variety of writing techniques such as metaphor, personification, and side descriptions to elaborate their articles and help readers deeply understand their thoughts. In Chinese writing classes, students spend most of the time in learning the usage of sophisticated words and writing techniques in writing stories or their own experiences. They learn techniques of being attractive storytellers instead of eloquent opinionated writers who can clearly and logically present their opinions towards some controversial social issues. Moreover, it has been found that Chinese people tend to consider matters in predicative order while the English speakers usually adopt a way of speaking in which they stick to the point at the very beginning of the speech. For instance, if Americans say “she went to bed early on Monday because she has an exam on Tuesday”, Chinese writing pattern would be “because she has an exam on Tuesday, she went to bed early on Monday”. It shows that Chinese people often give the reasons and preconditions before the consequences and the main body of the stories while Americans would rather state the results before giving the causes.
In western philosophy, it has been a convention to pursue the truth and details of every single thing in life, and hence people gradually develop the straight-forward thinking pattern. Conversely, Chinese people have been more accustomed to the harmony and unity of the whole environment. Undeniably, people’s thinking patterns decided by their cultural backgrounds affects how they read, write, and behave.
