我以中国为傲

[Chantry Cargill]

Hey everyone .

I was talking to a chinese friend and he had the following in his username on msn: "我以中国为傲"

He told me it means that he's proud to be chinese.

I understand that wo3 is I, zhong1guo2 is chinese, and ao4 means proud, but I don't understand what yi3 and wei4 do in this structure. I always thought wei4 meant do and I don't really understand yi3 at all.

When I asked my friend, he said it's far too complicated to explain, so I obviously didn't want to make him go through it all.

I'm just wondering if anyone here can help me understand what they're doing in this sentence and a little back ground info on each of the characters, I'd really appreciate it.

[jiangping]

Hi there,

以...為... is a pretty common set structure. Basically the 以 means 把/用 [take/use] and the 為 means 當作 (to be/as). So a more literal translation would be something like "I take China as my pride".

[Patpat]

one other thing to note is that 为 here is 2nd tone, since it's a verb; wei4 is usually the prepositional meaning.

[Hofmann]

The confusing part might be that 傲 is usually a verb. Usually in "以 noun1 為 noun2" noun2 is really a noun, but it's fine because in Chinese, word classes are often freely changed.

[zhxlier]

It's confusing because this guy didn't give the correct meaning of the sentence. His sentence means "I'm proud of China", certainly not "I'm proud of being Chinese".

以 A 为 B = take A as B.

[Mugi]

Could a non-Chinese person say 我以中国为傲?

[creamyhorror]

Could a non-Chinese person say 我以中国为傲?

Nope, unless he were a Chinese citizen (native or naturalised). For something to be your pride it has to be a major part of you.

His sentence means "I'm proud of China", certainly not "I'm proud of being Chinese".

Actually, "I take China as my pride" is closer to "I'm proud of being Chinese (in some sense or other)" IMO. "I'm proud of China" is ambiguous, whereas 我以中国为傲 requires the speaker to have China as part of his identity.

[Chantry Cargill]

Thanks everyone .

That helped.

[Mugi]

Nope, unless he were a Chinese citizen (native or naturalised). For something to be your pride it has to be a major part of you.

Actually, I was being a little facetious. "I am proud of being Chinese" is a much more accurate translation of 我以中国为傲 than "I am proud of China". Other possibilites might be "I am proud to be a Chinese citizen", or "I am proud to have China as my country". But "I am proud of China" has quite different connotations, and can be said by Chinese and non-Chinese nationals alike.

[crazillo]

This sentence pattern is Classical Chinese, but still quite common nowadays.

[ma3zi1]

If you are in Beijing (or if you visit), you may become familiar with this grammar structure due to its common usage in propaganda banners（宣传画）.

See the attached picture for an old example. It says:

以鋼为綱，全面跃进

This means something like:

"Take steel as a guiding principle. Take the great leap forward"

As I recall, there was always a list of ten or twelve sentences with that grammar structure posted as propaganda in the buses around Beijing.