It's not just "kinda works". It is definitely true that both sentences mean "suspect". The examples are wrong - or they show you how to translate suspect and doubt into natural Chinese respectively. They don't answer the Chinese-to-English question.
This isn’t a matter of “applying English logic”. Something can’t mean its own opposite. In this case, huaiyi means “suspect”. And if you suspect not X, then it’s the same thing as doubting X.
Even in your own example, the second sentence could be translated as “I suspect he didn’t come”.
Technically true but most of the examples there are almost always one is chosen over the other, with the exception being "drop", in which case "we dropped that song" would have to be context-based. Also not uncommon for the person who hears that to be confused of the meaning and ask a follow up "do you mean released?"
Although, consider the English "I wonder if he stole it". Depending on context and verbal emphasis, this could communicate either suspicion or doubt (i.e. of guilt).
Most Chinese words on their own have multiple meanings and are ambiguous. Which is why contextual information is important. This is the same in English actually.
Suspect by itself is ambiguous.
I suspect he did not come.
He is a suspect in a murder investigation in Minnesota. Two different ways the word can be used.
Except 我怀疑他没来，is more like “I suspect he didn’t come” if you were to translate it directly. Using “I doubt he came” would be more of a localization than a direct translation
There is a similar ambiguity in French when using doubt : "je me doute que X" (I doubt myself that X) means you are pretty sure that X. But if you say "je doute que X" then suddenly you are doubting X happening.
So yeah, a single word can change drastically depending on context and subtle usage hints. I'm not good enough in Chinese to tell you which, but it's not completely unheard of for something like that to happen with words, in general.
Heck, I'd say 借 is similarly ambivalent and yet it's not completely impossible to figure it out, is it ?
In Chinese there is no distinction. You can translate it to "guess" with a strongly negative tone. And the inclination depends on the context.
In your example, 怀疑他偷 often implies suspect. But if the context is that someone claims that he stole it for sure, and you say 怀疑是他偷的, then it becomes a doubt.
As a result, for many Chinese, figuring out which English word to use becomes a small challenge.
Edit:
Let me provide another perspective / rule of thumb.
怀疑 is an "egoistic" word. When used on others' opinions, it often means doubt. When used on your own guess, it often means suspect.
我怀疑他来了/我怀疑他没来 Both mean "suspect" because they are your opinions.
我怀疑这个结论/我怀疑你的话 Both mean doubt because they are others' opinions.
when 怀疑 is used with a verb phrase that contains a positive scenario or a situation I would wish for, it's "to doubt", and
when 怀疑 is used with a verb phrase that contains a negative scenario or a situation that is bad for me, it's "to suspect"?
I'm just now realizing that even "to doubt" and "to suspect" are two sides of the same coin, in that you make a weak and mostly negative assumption about something.
There's a similar thing in French, the meaning of "douter" (from which doubt comes and has the same meaning) is reversed when it is used pronominally as "se douter", which means to suspect.
Grammatically, 怀疑+noun means doubt and 怀疑+sentence means suspect. If you dig deeper, the mindset behind this is that "noun" here describes an objective concept/thing (by others) and "sentence" describes a subjective opinion by oneself.
Practically speaking, checking whether it's a noun or sentence following 怀疑 will rarely give you exceptions.
You would probably avoid constructing a sentence like that to begin if you wanted to say “I doubt that it was him who stole my phone.” Especially since the word has a negative connotation like “suspect”.
Excellent_Sleep6357 is completely wrong in their first 2 paragraphs. 怀疑 basically means that you’re passing judgement on something. It means that you don’t trust the reliability of something. In your example, 我怀疑他偷了我的手机, the context to what you suspect is supplied: you suspect that he’s stolen your phone.
If you doubted that he stole it, you’d say: 我怀疑他不是偷了我手机的人. You suspect that [he’s not the one who stole your phone]. Alternatively, you doubt (‘suspect that he’s not’) that [he’s the one who stole your phone]. They’re basically two sides of the same coin.
Let’s say a news article comes out claiming that the sky will be orange tomorrow. You could say: 我怀疑我眼睛是不是出了什么问题… Or “I half-suspect there’s something wrong with my eyes…” ‘Half-suspect’, because of the implication of 是不是 meaning ‘true or false’/‘yes or no’.
(I might be missing some edge cases, but at the moment I can't think of any)
As a verb,
Case 1:
我怀疑他偷了东西。
怀疑+statement= I suspect that (affirmative) ...
Case 2:
我怀疑他。/我很怀疑他。
怀疑+object= I am suspicious of/I suspect him.
Case 3:
他偷了东西？我很怀疑。
Statement+怀疑= I doubt that [statement]
Case 3b:
我很怀疑。
I doubt that. (Refers to whatever came immediately before, could be something another speaker said.)
You do not generally say 我怀疑 by itself similar to how you do not generally say "I suspect" by itself. (Although I hesitate to call it a transitive verb because as a native speaker who didn't study Chinese linguistics formally, I don't feel it maps exactly to how transitive verbs behave?)
*
Think of how "to stand" and "to stand up" mean related but slightly different meanings. The sentence structure in using 怀疑 acts in a way similar to the addition or omission of "up"
Huh. This is not easy in either language. In any case, I went through my 现代汉语词典 dictionary, and a whole bunch of example sentences, and there seems to be three main meanings for 我怀疑X in Chinese:
我怀疑X. I don't strongly believe X is true. (X = verb phrase)
我怀疑他会来。 (I doubt he will come.)
我怀疑他投我的票。 (I doubt he voted for me.)
我怀疑它会发生。 (I doubt it will occur.)
Here, we're leaning towards believing that X is false.
我怀疑X. I weakly believe X is true. (X = verb phrase)
我怀疑他偷了我的手机。 (I suspect he stole my mobile phone.) [from the screenshot]
我怀疑他是骗子。 (I suspect he is a swindler.)
我怀疑明天会下雨。 (I suspect it will rain tomorrow.)
Here, we're leaning towards believing that X is true. (And X seems to usually be a negative thing.)
我怀疑X. I do not fully trust X. (X = noun phrase)
我怀疑他说的话。 (I don't fully trust what he said.)
我怀疑他的动机。 (I don't fully trust his motives.)
我怀疑自己的嗅觉。 (I don't fully trust my sense of smell.)
And, for some reason, it seems preferred to not put a negation after the 怀疑:
我怀疑他喜欢我。 <--- prefer this one
我怀疑他不喜欢我。
I don't think he loves me.
when 怀疑 is used with a verb phrase that contains a positive scenario or a situation I would wish for, it's "to doubt", and
when 怀疑 is used with a verb phrase that contains a negative scenario or a situation that is bad for me, it's "to suspect"?
I'm just now realizing that even "to doubt" and "to suspect" are two sides of the same coin, in that you make a weak and mostly negative assumption about something.
I think you're mostly right, but natural languages often have exceptions (and at a certain point it become academic).
There's one more important case: for neutral things like
我怀疑我是左撇子。
I doubt I'm left-handed.
I suspect I'm left-handed.
怀疑 can be used for both "doubt" and "suspect" depending on which makes more sense.
I just downloaded 《偏向极性问句的动态语义研究》, a thesis which (among other things) explores this for a few pages. It has this explanation:
当怀疑对象是旧信息时，“怀疑”表否定质疑；当怀疑对象是新信息时，“怀疑”表肯定猜测。
So if you 怀疑 old (ground-truth) information, then you suspect it is false, and if you 怀疑 new information, then you suspect it is true. So that explains things like the left-handed example above, and things like:
Wife about husband: 我怀疑他喜欢我。 I doubt he loves me.
Girl about buy she has a crush on: 我怀疑他喜欢我。 I suspect he likes me.
It seems this one sentence can have two complete-opposite meanings, depending on context.
And there's also things like this:
我怀疑他爱不爱我。 I'm uncertain if he loves me.
I think I'll stop here though---sure the rabbit hole goes deeper, but at some point you've got to stop and accept an incomplete understanding. If there's doubt, use another word in your output.
You sort have to go with the expanded version of 怀疑, which is basically 怀有疑问, and it roughly translates to "having unconfirmed beliefs". And once you get here, then you can see that 怀疑can go both ways
"Suspect" and "doubt" are not synonyms in English. What statements like "I suspect that he is the killer" and "I doubt that he is the killer" have in common is the lack of certainty. Suspicion and doubt are opposite sides of an axis of uncertainty.
Dont apply English logic to Chinese.
In Chinese the direction is supplied by the structure, not by the verb itself.
我怀疑他来了
I suspect he came
我怀疑他没来
I doubt he came
The English logic still kinda works, because "I doubt he came" is just another way of saying "I suspect he didn't come".
It's not just "kinda works". It is definitely true that both sentences mean "suspect". The examples are wrong - or they show you how to translate suspect and doubt into natural Chinese respectively. They don't answer the Chinese-to-English question.
Suspect and doubt have the same meaning though
Are you sure?
"The fact that he stole it is suspect"
It's already in the example above, literally. In Chinese it's just expressing something to the effect of "I have a feeling that xx".
Your example is for English, not Chinese.
Edit: are y'all even trying to learn Chinese...
This isn’t a matter of “applying English logic”. Something can’t mean its own opposite. In this case, huaiyi means “suspect”. And if you suspect not X, then it’s the same thing as doubting X.
Even in your own example, the second sentence could be translated as “I suspect he didn’t come”.
Sure it can https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym#Examples
very good!
Are we learning Chinese or English here
Technically true but most of the examples there are almost always one is chosen over the other, with the exception being "drop", in which case "we dropped that song" would have to be context-based. Also not uncommon for the person who hears that to be confused of the meaning and ask a follow up "do you mean released?"
In my line of work, we often use “oversight” and it has two somewhat opposite meanings depending on context:
True, those are used in different sentence structures though. One is quantifiable one isn't
In mathmatic, if there's single false example, whole clause are false. If you're just trying to apply "logic" into here.
Some words do have two opposite meanings!
Everyone else left before me, so I am the last one left.
Shit, so no one is left now!
That's distinguished by being used as a verb vs adjective though.
Although, consider the English "I wonder if he stole it". Depending on context and verbal emphasis, this could communicate either suspicion or doubt (i.e. of guilt).
I believe 疑 might be similarly ambiguous.
Most Chinese words on their own have multiple meanings and are ambiguous. Which is why contextual information is important. This is the same in English actually.
Suspect by itself is ambiguous.
I suspect he did not come. He is a suspect in a murder investigation in Minnesota. Two different ways the word can be used.
Yes, so harbor suspicions is probably the best direct translation
Except 我怀疑他没来，is more like “I suspect he didn’t come” if you were to translate it directly. Using “I doubt he came” would be more of a localization than a direct translation
Tysm for pointing that out. I was confused for a moment~
There is a similar ambiguity in French when using doubt : "je me doute que X" (I doubt myself that X) means you are pretty sure that X. But if you say "je doute que X" then suddenly you are doubting X happening.
So yeah, a single word can change drastically depending on context and subtle usage hints. I'm not good enough in Chinese to tell you which, but it's not completely unheard of for something like that to happen with words, in general.
Heck, I'd say 借 is similarly ambivalent and yet it's not completely impossible to figure it out, is it ?
This is the difference between "suspect that" and "suspect not". Doubting is suspecting that the opposite of something happened.
For clarity, I would say that 懷疑 is simply to suspect, and can be used for both affirming and negating.
When I read the example sentence 我怀疑他输了我的手机, how should I know whether I suspect that he stole the phone or I doubt he stole the phone?
In Chinese there is no distinction. You can translate it to "guess" with a strongly negative tone. And the inclination depends on the context.
In your example, 怀疑他偷 often implies suspect. But if the context is that someone claims that he stole it for sure, and you say 怀疑是他偷的, then it becomes a doubt.
As a result, for many Chinese, figuring out which English word to use becomes a small challenge.
Edit:
Let me provide another perspective / rule of thumb.
怀疑 is an "egoistic" word. When used on others' opinions, it often means doubt. When used on your own guess, it often means suspect.
我怀疑他来了/我怀疑他没来 Both mean "suspect" because they are your opinions.
我怀疑这个结论/我怀疑你的话 Both mean doubt because they are others' opinions.
Is it possible that
I'm just now realizing that even "to doubt" and "to suspect" are two sides of the same coin, in that you make a weak and mostly negative assumption about something.
There's a similar thing in French, the meaning of "douter" (from which doubt comes and has the same meaning) is reversed when it is used pronominally as "se douter", which means to suspect.
Grammatically, 怀疑+noun means doubt and 怀疑+sentence means suspect. If you dig deeper, the mindset behind this is that "noun" here describes an objective concept/thing (by others) and "sentence" describes a subjective opinion by oneself.
Practically speaking, checking whether it's a noun or sentence following 怀疑 will rarely give you exceptions.
In this context, when someone says 我怀疑他偷了我的手机, I would more likely think of the former.
To express the latter, more people would usually say 我不认为/我不相信他偷了我的手机 (I don't believe) to make things clearer.
You would probably avoid constructing a sentence like that to begin if you wanted to say “I doubt that it was him who stole my phone.” Especially since the word has a negative connotation like “suspect”.
Excellent_Sleep6357 is completely wrong in their first 2 paragraphs. 怀疑 basically means that you’re passing judgement on something. It means that you don’t trust the reliability of something. In your example, 我怀疑他偷了我的手机, the context to what you suspect is supplied: you suspect that he’s stolen your phone.
If you doubted that he stole it, you’d say: 我怀疑他不是偷了我手机的人. You suspect that [he’s not the one who stole your phone]. Alternatively, you doubt (‘suspect that he’s not’) that [he’s the one who stole your phone]. They’re basically two sides of the same coin.
Let’s say a news article comes out claiming that the sky will be orange tomorrow. You could say: 我怀疑我眼睛是不是出了什么问题… Or “I half-suspect there’s something wrong with my eyes…” ‘Half-suspect’, because of the implication of 是不是 meaning ‘true or false’/‘yes or no’.
(I might be missing some edge cases, but at the moment I can't think of any) As a verb,
Case 1: 我怀疑他偷了东西。 怀疑+statement= I suspect that (affirmative) ...
Case 2: 我怀疑他。/我很怀疑他。 怀疑+object= I am suspicious of/I suspect him.
Case 3: 他偷了东西？我很怀疑。 Statement+怀疑= I doubt that [statement]
Case 3b: 我很怀疑。 I doubt that. (Refers to whatever came immediately before, could be something another speaker said.)
You do not generally say 我怀疑 by itself similar to how you do not generally say "I suspect" by itself. (Although I hesitate to call it a transitive verb because as a native speaker who didn't study Chinese linguistics formally, I don't feel it maps exactly to how transitive verbs behave?)
* Think of how "to stand" and "to stand up" mean related but slightly different meanings. The sentence structure in using 怀疑 acts in a way similar to the addition or omission of "up"
Huh. This is not easy in either language. In any case, I went through my 现代汉语词典 dictionary, and a whole bunch of example sentences, and there seems to be three main meanings for 我怀疑X in Chinese:
我怀疑X. I don't strongly believe X is true. (X = verb phrase)
Here, we're leaning towards believing that X is false.
我怀疑X. I weakly believe X is true. (X = verb phrase)
Here, we're leaning towards believing that X is true. (And X seems to usually be a negative thing.)
我怀疑X. I do not fully trust X. (X = noun phrase)
And, for some reason, it seems preferred to not put a negation after the 怀疑:
Is it possible that
I'm just now realizing that even "to doubt" and "to suspect" are two sides of the same coin, in that you make a weak and mostly negative assumption about something.
I think you're mostly right, but natural languages often have exceptions (and at a certain point it become academic).
There's one more important case: for neutral things like
怀疑 can be used for both "doubt" and "suspect" depending on which makes more sense.
I just downloaded 《偏向极性问句的动态语义研究》, a thesis which (among other things) explores this for a few pages. It has this explanation:
So if you 怀疑 old (ground-truth) information, then you suspect it is false, and if you 怀疑 new information, then you suspect it is true. So that explains things like the left-handed example above, and things like:
It seems this one sentence can have two complete-opposite meanings, depending on context.
And there's also things like this:
I think I'll stop here though---sure the rabbit hole goes deeper, but at some point you've got to stop and accept an incomplete understanding. If there's doubt, use another word in your output.
In this context, the core meaning of huaiyi is not about being positive or negative, but the element of uncertainty itself.
It’s “doubt” when followed by a noun, but “suspect” when followed by a clause.
Possess suspission.
I possess suspission he stole my phone.
When negative/ converse implications it can function as "doubt" translated into English, as it seems you're realizing.
You sort have to go with the expanded version of 怀疑, which is basically 怀有疑问, and it roughly translates to "having unconfirmed beliefs". And once you get here, then you can see that 怀疑can go both ways
The confusion is simply because in English “doubt” and “suspect” in verb form are not exact synonyms, quite different in my opinion.
I've rarely heard people say huaiyi for doubt.
On the contrary, that might be the only way I've heard doubt expressed.
Might be regional. People I know usually say "我想不是吧“ or "應該不會吧”.
懷疑 has always been "suspect".
那还真不是，这个和地域以及个人说话习惯有关，但是我身边的人包括我经常说huaiyi for doubt。。
I use it somewhat frequently when I disagree with my colleague. 「你的說法是基於某某假設，但這個假設適用於這個狀況嗎？我蠻懷疑的」
I also use it to mean suspect: 「我懷疑使用者會遇到這個狀況是因為他的操作順序跟我們的預期不一樣」
As a native speaker both feel pretty natural. I didn't realise the the meanings are opposite until I learnt English LOL
my guess is verb is positive = suspect , verb is negative = doubt
It's all about context in Chinese; while "怀疑" can mean both suspecting and doubting, the sentence structure helps clarify the intended meaning.
HackChinese. Nice.
I pretty much see them as clear as water.
To "suspect" and to "doubt" are sinonyms... Suspition and Doubt are both in the same side.
You have doubts because you suspect something.
"Suspect" and "doubt" are not synonyms in English. What statements like "I suspect that he is the killer" and "I doubt that he is the killer" have in common is the lack of certainty. Suspicion and doubt are opposite sides of an axis of uncertainty.
When you suspect is because you have doubts.
Yes...they are related, not equivalent, as I explained.
"I suspect that..." = "I believe that..." "I doubt that..." = "I DON'T believe that..."
I'm sure this has been asked before but What app is this? Thanks in advance!
Hack Chinese.