【正文】 are hold more or less in mon by people who occupy particular geographic areas.” (D. Brown, 1978) The relationship between culture and animal wordsWith the historical development, relation between human and animals is getting closer and closer. In the primitive society, primitive man hunted animals for food. In modern age, people regard many animals as their good friends. People can not live without animals. Based on such kind of close relationship, human culture and animal words have big connections. Language is the bearer of culture. And animal words are the important part of a language as they carry distinctive cultural features. To a large degree, animal words reflect a country’s culture. There are many words closely connected with animals in both Chinese and English. And these animal words are mostly different, because they have their own cultural connotations. From these different words, we can see the different cultural connotations in both Chinese and English, concluding religions, mythologies, literature, modes of production and ways of thinking.The thesis deals with the differences between Chinese and English cultural connotation reflected by animal words. It is intended to state what kinds of cultural differences and why these differences appear. Therefore, it aims at attracting people’s attention to the differences in learning English and the acrosscultural munication. 3. Cultural differences Cultural differences can be reflected in religions, literature, ways of thinking and modes of production, if we distinguish the differences of animal words between Chinese and English. Differences in religions People from different countries have different religions. Their religious disparities can be presented by some animal words mentioned in religious books. DifferencesIn China, people are deeply affected by Buddhism, which is the most inveterate. In European society, Christianity plays a particularly important role. Most western people are Christian. But where did the chief faiths e from? How did they e into being? In the religion of china, gods were simple, real and mundane people who became gods via asceticism. The chief god was Sakyamuni who was originally a prince. Due to his tiredness to live in palace, he was eager to find the truth of the life and safe the miserable people. After the meditation that lasted 49 days, he came to understand and became a sage at last. As a result, he attracted many people to be believers and they revered him as a director of thought. So Sakyamuni became the Buddha. On the contrary, in Christianity, Jesus, who was the chief god of Christianity, was the son of God Jehovah and a mon girl whose name was Maria. He was an envoy to save human beings and to atone for human beings’ crime. Because he was Jehovah’s son, Jehovah’s soul was certainly in him. So it made him a soul with wisdom and intelligent, strategy and ability, and knowledge and reverence (Zheng Chunmiao, 1994). That’s to say, Jesus’ deity came from Jehovah. But who was Jehovah? He was a god who exceeds the spirits of human. He existed before human exist and he existed independently. He was eternal and absolute. He was the ultimate reason of the existence of everything. The image of gods came into being because of the poor production force. It reflected that primitive people felt mystery to the supernatural phenomenon appearance. When selfconscious was founded and made nature as a dissident power which controlled human beings and the surrounding, the image of gods came into being. Gods, whether Chinese gods or western gods, are all created by their people according to their needs and imagination, and almost all the evolution courses of the gods that are worshiped by people develop from animalshaped gods to half man half animal to manshaped gods. That’s because there are quite a lot of differences in society and history between Chinese and western countries, and as gods in religion is a kind of social consciousness which is the reflection of social existence, the relationship between man and gods have quite a lot of differences. In western countries, the relationship is mainly about penance and accepting penance, and that in Chinese religion is about preying for blessings and giving blessings. What acpanies the former is man’s worship towards gods, while the latter respect. Western people think their ancestors had the guilt of eating the forbidden fruit secretly, and they believe that Jesus Christ can rescue them。 Chinese people realize that their power is too weak in front of nature and society, and thus they need to turn to gods for help. The former was originated in the sense of guilt, while the latter one was originated in reverence. Western religion has absolutely exclusiveness, but Chinese religion has relativity and patibility. (Zheng Chunmiao, 1994). In the west, one people just can believe in only one God and one religion. It’s illegal that there’s another religion, and anyone who believe in that must be punished. In China, because it doesn’t involve whoever is given mission by God, no religion has higher status than another. Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism get along well. And they have more freedom in choosing which gods to worship.Because the beliefs are different between China and western countries, the people’s characters have shown their great differences between the two sides. Firstly, Chinese people lay stress on groups while western people on individual. The mainstream in traditional ideas is maintaining the whole country and people’s harmony. Oppositely, western world is a society that lays stress on individual. God says that person born equally but if he works hard he can go into the heaven. Secondly, morality and justice are more important to Chinese people while utilitarianism to western people. Chinese gods don’t pay any attention to their own need or money. In fact, they have no need, no hunger and they don’t even feel thirsty. With t