Expressing "mistakenly think that" with "yiwei"

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.

Subject + 以为 + Phrase

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

Examples

• 他 以为 美洲 是 印度。真 笨！
• 我 以为 那 瓶 啤酒 没有 那么 重。
• 经理 每 天 骂 这个 骂 那个，他 以为 他 是 老板 呢？

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