Expressing "mistakenly think that" with "yiwei"

Revision as of 04:04, 25 April 2017 by WikiSysop (talk | contribs) (Text replacement - ""," to ","")
Chinese-grammar-wiki-wei.jpg

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

  • 以为你俩分手了。yǐwéi nǐ liǎ fēnshǒu le.I thought you two broke up.
  • 以为 她的 行李 没有 那么 重。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


Sources and further reading

Books