Expressing "mistakenly think that" with "yiwei"
Revision as of 01:26, 15 November 2011 by Jonathan.pope (talk | contribs)
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.
The structure is:
Subject + 以为 + Phrase
The phrase will be a whole new statement that is actually incorrect.
Some 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 办公室 里 骂 这个 骂 那个，他 以为 他 是 谁 呢？
