最 and 最为

[cecilia.ch]

Can you explain me the difference between 最 and 最为？

谢谢！

[anonymoose]

As far as I know, no difference in meaning, but 最为 tends to be more formal, and usually used in written language.

[renzhe]

nciku says that 最为 can only be used before disyllabic verbs and adjectives.

[aristotle1990]

As far as I know, no difference in meaning, but 最为 tends to be more formal, and usually used in written language.

It's definitely more formal, but you can hear it used a lot on formal news programs like CCTV 新闻联播.

[Hofmann]

最為 appears more tacky and sophistimacated to me.

[Sarevok]

nciku says that 最为 can only be used before disyllabic verbs and adjectives.

This is the most important difference in terms of syntax. You can compare it to 更为/更加, 较为, 甚为 and others, all of which share similar syntactic constraints.

Frequent usage in formal/written language goes hand in hand with that, as there is a prosody-related tendency to use bisyllabic word pairs (forming a 2+2 structure) in writing, e.g. 最重要 often becomes 最为重要 in written Chinese...