3。1 Chinese dialect and American English

     Chinese and English belong to two different languages, reflecting different cultural backgrounds。 Cultural persities make communicative obstacles inevitably appear during the process of intercultural communication。 What needs to be stressed is that the two interact, and that understanding of one requires understanding of the other。来,自,优.尔:论;文*网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766-

     In the film, Lao Yang speaks Chinese which is not standard mandarin。 It is a local dialect in Shanxi。 Brooks speaks English。 Therefore, it is very hard for them to communicate smoothly。 For example, Lao Yang has a mantra, which can be expressed in English “fuck”。 Lao Yang is a farmer and does not learn English。 He consults the stationmaster about three English words: eat, dog, and sun。 In his mind, he just needs to put the two words “dog” and “sun” together to create a new word。 So he creates a new word “dogsun” which could be amount to the English word “fuck”。 There’s no doubt that Brooks did not understand the meaning when he heard Lao Yang said the word “dogsun”。 Due to a lack of understanding of American culture, Lao Yang directly uses the Chinese word-formation habit, just combining two words together。 This phenomenon reflects the differences in language and culture。 In the middle of the film, Lao Yang said to Brooks “you look like an imp and you make the villagers laugh at me。” Of course, the phrase “laugh at” has been treated with translation。 Lao Yang expressed the meaning with Chinese dialect which made Brooks very confused。 This suggests that even with certain language ability, it is not easy to conduct intercultural communication。