【正文】 mbers stand for holy and luck。 twenty/twenty(眼力正常的 )。 From the angle of cultural history, religions are often considered to be the score source of a culture. There once appeared a time when religions cultures were dominant invisibly. Due to different symbolic meanings, different nations have pletely different association on number 13 or 十三 . To the English and most of the westerners, they believe in Christianity, which is by far the largest religion in the world in terms of the number of its The cultural connotations of numbers are shaped by this religion. In regard to the number “thirteen” in English language, it is the most ominous number and the evil symbol in English culture, which source is Christianity. It is said that Jesus was hand cuffed and later nailed to die on the cross because of the betrayal of Judas. In other words, Judas, Jesus’ disciple, betrayed him for the sake of thirty pieces of silver. Consequently, Judas bees a synonym of traitor. In English idioms, a devil′s dozen, expresses 十三 . Being aware of tremendous power of mythology and religion, the English and most of westerners abstain from 13 like avoiding plague. In contrast, in Chinese culture, the number 13 is considered to be a lucky number because of different aesthetic standards. For instance, Confucian classics, which has controlled Chinese thought culture for nearly two thousand year, is called Thirteen Classics of Confucianism. Similarly, imperial mausoleum of Ming dynasty is named Ming Tombs(十三陵 ), which is a famous tourist destination nowadays. C. The Meaning Variation in Social Customs With the rapid development of society, not only English, but also Chinese, partial meaning of words seem to change. Particularly, the development of a part of numerical words is connected with that of social culture. Semantic meanings of numerical words are so obscure that the numbers already have fabricated to great extent. One example, four hundred means famous, fashionable upper classes in a district. So the figure, four hundred became a synonym of people from high society. Four hundred guests attended a dancing party, which was held by Mrs. William Astor in 1892. To illustrate this point further, let’s take more word s for examples. Fie it, in American idiom, expresses the meaning of refusing answer questions. In it, the meaning of fire originated from the fifth amendment of the constitution of the USA. The amendment stipulates that anyone cannot be forced to admit one’s guilt in criminal case. The fifth column refers to spies or enemy agents who were sent by enemies, originating from people who panted the city when Spanish armies attacked Madrid, capital of Spain. There are other examples as follows: Fire dollar words(復(fù)雜的字眼 )； catch 22(第二十二條軍規(guī) )。 【標(biāo)題】 中西方數(shù)字的文化差異 【作者】 柯娟 【關(guān)鍵詞】 數(shù)字；吉祥文化；禁忌文化；差異 【指導(dǎo)老師】 余烈全 【專業(yè)】 英語(yǔ) 【正文】 I. Introduction Culture consists of material civilization and spirit civilization of the whole society. Chinese scholars, such as Hu Wenzhong and Jia Yuxin, have defined culture into two senses. In a broad sense, culture refers to all the material and spiritual products created by man. In a narrow sense, it refers only to spiritual products including language, literature, fine arts and so on. 1 Different people define “culture” from different angles. In fact, there are more than two hundred and fifty definitions. What has been termed the classic definition of culture was provided by the 19th century English anthropologist Edward Burt Tyler declared that Culture is a plex whole, which included knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of Cultural differences reflect that people in different environments possess differences of many aspects, such as language, knowledge, and religious faiths. Differences in culture, especially between China and English speaking countries, may lead to various understanding and explanation on the same thing or conception, even to reduce misunderstanding each other. Number is a bination of concept and mark, which is a conclusion that humankind observe object world and understand material world. 3 Number is used to mean the quantity or to assign the place of a series by order of number. 4 However, a special numerical culture exists in different language backgrounds and national cultures. Numbers clearly reflect the psychological bases, traditions and characteristics of culture because of the impact of cultural differences, such as national psychology, religious belief, language worship and aesthetic notion. Numbers have various mysterious taboo, lucky and symbolic meaning, and they show cultural characteristics of nations, even their own numeral culture. Meanwhile such numeral culture unavoidably influence people’s psychology and behaviors. Number, as one kind of important culture language, is used frequently as thought and intercourse tool. Hence, this article is to discus the causes of cultural differences of numbers by analyzing on some representative numbers in both Chinese and English, to know the differences in order to respect each other mutually, reduce misunderstanding and do better crosscultural munication. Ⅱ.The Causes of Cultural Di fferences of Numbers A. Symbolic Meaning Brought by Homophony and Partial Meaning of Numbers Homophony refers to two or more words with the same form but with different meaning. In Chinese language, there are a large number of homonyms. Homonyms are words with different meaning but either identical both in sound and spelling or identical only in spelling or sound. 5 So homophony is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a cultural phenomenon. It is connected with the culture, national mentality and aesthetic customs. Among the homonymous phenomena, numbers are typical. It is the