They gave the example of the verb yiwei in Mandarin. If you say “ta yiwei X” it means “s/he thinks X” with a strong connotation that X is in fact false. The Spanish equivalent is supposed to be the verb creerse [1], like if you say “Juan se cree que lo van a ascender” it means “Juan thinks that they are going to promote him” but with a strong connotation that he won’t in fact be promoted. English doesn’t really have a verb for “think” with the connotation that the belief is false. The claim (for what it’s worth, I am skeptical) is that English speakers are slower to learn the concept that someone can have a false belief, because English lacks such a verb.
> If you say “ta yiwei X” it means “s/he thinks X” with a strong connotation that X is in fact false.
I was interested to learn just now that Chinese dictionaries don't bother to mention this. I assume the reason is that the analogous construction in Classical Chinese has no such implication.
By contrast, Chinese-English dictionaries vary from noting that 以为 "usually" refers to mistaken belief to outright defining it that way.
English has words that are both connotative and denotative for “they think X” where X is false. The denotative verbs are simply “misbelieve” or “misthink” if you know it is false.
The connotative form which immediately comes to mind is the various forms of “notion”. Its primary use case is to indicate that the thing it refers to is likely false and has no connection to reality.
In the form of "creerse" it can also mean "believe in yourself" which used to have the same connotation of being mistakenly overconfident, although in the last couple of years I've started to see more "debes de creértela" Linkedin memes which have the opposite (true belief) connotation, more like "fake it till you make it".
If anyone's confused, don't worry. This verb always means "believe", the only difference is in the subtle connotations but they never affect the actual meaning.
In "yiwei"/"creer" case, Juan believes that they are going to promote him (but his belief is not very well calibrated and is likely false). yiwei/creerse asserts something about the truth value of the belief, in addition to what the belief is.
In the "doubts" case, Juan believes that they are not going to promote him. There is no assertion regarding the truth value of that belief.
Quite a bit, actually. It shows that Juan is aware of it, whereas in the Spanish equivalent he may actually believe it, even though it still is false. In a way you are very much illustrating the GP's point. And if I got it wrong then I am doing the same :)
TIL thanks, but the evidence is weak I'm afraid. English isn't my mother tongue, and it's 6am here. I misread that this "strong connotation" was about the subject (Juan) and not about the object (Promotion).
> English doesn’t really have a verb for “think” with the connotation that the belief is false
Really? Huh, maybe. I suppose, guess, imagine, assume, opine, claim, that none of these verbs carry a strong enough connotation of falsehood. There's take for granted, but it's unwieldy. I fancy that the verb fancy would be very suitable for the job, but it makes one sound like an 1850s Southern Belle.
[1] according to https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/vie... for example. I don’t know enough Spanish to say if the verb really works this way. Verbs like this are called “contrafactive”