English Help Online's Blog

In my lessons, people often use the word “kind”, but it is overused, especially by Japanese people. English speakers use the word “nice” much more often than the word “kind”. However, we do use the word “kind” sometimes. The basic difference between them is that we say people are “nice” in a general way, and we usually use the word “kind” to talk about a specific action that someone does. For example:

My mother is a very nice person. She’s really friendly and is always willing to help other people.

It was very kind of your mother to help me cook dinner for my husband. Please tell her how much I appreciate it.

Bill is one of the nicest people I know. Everyone likes him.

Bill is such a kind man. Yesterday, he gave a homeless person $10 to buy some food.

Victoria is a really nice woman. She spent over five hours helping me with my project yesterday. That was so kind of her to do that.

As I mentioned before, “nice” is used much more frequently than “kind”. If you’re not sure about which one to use, you can use “nice”, and it will sound very natural.