Wednesday, July 9, 2008

"smile" vs "laugh"

> 每次想起这件事情的时候,总觉得很好笑
> It makes me smile every time it comes into my mind.

"Smile" should be changed to "laugh". These two words have different meanings; not just one means a little facial expression and the other means loud laugh with mouth wide open. You can say

"Every time I think of this, I want to laugh."
or
"Evert time I look back, it makes me laugh."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for creating the blog to help Chinese understand English better. I really find it very helpful as a Chinese :) I've a question though about smile & laugh. In Carpenter's Yesterday Once More, there is a line that reads "...Waiting for my favorite songs. When they played I'd sing along, It makes me smile..." So why is it appropriate in this context? Thanks!!

Yong Huang said...

Thanks for reading. In that song, "smile" is a perfect word, because it means she feels happy and complacent. If it were "laugh", it would completely destroy the beauty of this song.