Expressing "mistakenly think that" with "yiwei"

We often have mistaken beliefs about various topics. With this article, we learn how to express them in Chinese!

Structure

In English, the verb "to think" can imply that the belief is incorrect, e.g. in "I thought it was legal here." Chinese has a specific verb for this kind of mistaken belief: 以为 (yǐwéi). Literally these two characters mean "take to be", i.e. someone takes one thing to be something else.

Subj. + 以为 + Phrase

The phrase will be a whole new statement that is actually incorrect.

Examples

• 我 以为你俩分手了。Wǒ yǐwéi nǐ liǎ fēnshǒu le.I thought you two broke up.
• 我 以为 她的 行李 没有 那么 重。Wǒ yǐwéi tā de xínglǐ méiyǒu nàme zhòng.I thought her luggage wouldn't be that heavy.
• 我们 还以为你 是 商店的老板 . Wǒmen hái yǐwéi nǐ shì shāngdiàn de lǎobǎn.We thought you were the shop-keeper.

See also

• Result complement "-cuo"

Sources and further reading

Books

• Short-term Spoken Chinese: Elementary (汉语口语速成基础篇) (pp. 106) →buy
• Contemporary Chinese 4 (当代中文4) (pp. 31) →buy