Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[yoshi-pooh]

Hi, everyone!

Please look at the sentences below.

A: Sake is to the Japanese as wine is to the French.
B: Sake is to the Japanese what wine is to the French.

I understand the sentences have almost the same meaning, but I'm not sure about the part of speech of the "as" in A .

Here are my assumptions:

1. The "as" in A is a relative pronoun like the "what" in B. Therefore, Both sentences have the same gramatical structure.

2. The "as" in A is not a relative pronoun, but a conjunction that connects the two clauses. In other words, A can be paraphrased to "Sake exists to the Japanese as wine exists to the French." Therefore, Sentences A and B are same in meaning, but different in term of the grammatical structure.

Which of my assumptions do you think is correct? Or are both wrong?
Or can both be correct?

Thank you!

Yoshi-pooh