What is the difference between a big school and a big school?

Today I had a chat with Fredrik at a cup of coffee in the cafe where we usually go. We started talking about the difference in languages since there was entering a couple of japanese, a young lady, probably a student and an older man with shirt and intellectual appearance. Both seemed to be very balanced and well educated, something that might be special to see in China (at least for our conception of balance & education).
Unnecessary to say that chinese people „hate“ japanese, as they say, and the reason is easy and not to understand for a foreigner like me: „because of history, you know“. I dont know if the reason they name most of the time should just hide a kind of envy. To discuss about that is equal to enter in a never ending cycle.
I tried, I was misunderstood and at the end I was taught.
Anyway, the japanese couple beside our table began to discuss something and we were happy that we were able to distinguish chinese from japanese.
We as very beginner in learning the chinese language have a bit of a clue how this language works:
'daxue' means university and 'xue' just means school. If you put the caracter for 'big' (in chinese 'da') infront of 'xue' you get a 'big school', a university.
An other example could be shown from a question form. 'Bu' is the negation and it works like the following formula: verb + 'Bu' +verb. Translated it would sound like this 'do you see or you dont?', 'do you go or you dont?', 'do you like or you dont',....
As I know there is no word for 'without', you are supposed to by-pass it and replace it with a sentence where you use 'not have'. Or lets put it this way: dictionary says 'without' is same word as 'not have' but if you use it you actually say 'not have' in chinese. Confused?

The question came up.
Do you think the Chinese language can be as specific as English when it is about a certain subject for example in science?
I surely do not know but Im really curious about that, how accurate you can determinate and define the differences in things.

Our conclusion:
For now it seems like japanese are drawing with tiny brushes to make sure every stroke is in the right place and chinese is painted like a contemporary illustration done with one bucket and it says 'daxue'.