[Ana laura]

Hi everyone

I'm a bit confused about these two phrases, I can't see the difference between them...

E.g. He had planned to retire but he had a sudden change of heart/change of mind and decided to continue working.

I know I can say 'I've changed my mind' but Can I also say 'I've changed my heart'?

Thank you very much in advance!

[susan53]

First - no you can't say I've changed my heart (unless possibly you've just had a transplant ) To have a change of heart is a fixed idiom, meaning to change your feelings or attitudes towards something and do something kinder or more positive (from the listener's point of view) :
The boss told us we'd have to work Saturdays, but then she had a change of heart and decided to close.

Notice then that the meaning is slightly different from to change your mind - which simply means to make a second, different decision or to change your opinion, but with no "moral" implications :
I know I told you we were having fish for dinner, but I changed my mind. We're having chicken.
I thought "Catcher in the Rye" was a great novel when I read it at 16, but then I read it again at 22 and changed my mind.

So - to change your mind can be used to describe any overturned decision or change of opinion. To have a change of heart is used to describe a change of decision or attitude, but implies that the new decision is in some way kinder or more ethical than the old one.

You can use both change of mind and change of heart with the verb have :

Vodafone has a change of mind on the Galaxy Tablet
Now, however, the company has apparently had a change of heart

but only mind can be used with change as a verb :
I've changed my mind about John. I liked him at first but not any more.

Hope that clarifies.

[PBJ2]

Not to take away from the excellent posting above but I believe a person can have a change of heart towards the "darker" feelings also. She felt kindly towards the boy but after the first day she had a change of heart.

I have always taken the "change of heart" idiom as to have a change of feeling.

[Ana laura]

Thank you very much Susan!

Your explanation is excellent, as ever!

[Ana laura]

Hi

Thank you for reply! Let me see if I got this right...

To have a change of mind=to change your opinion/thoughts about something/somebody or to decide to do something else.

To have a change of heart=to change the way you feel about something. At first, you have good/kind feelings towards something or somebody and after a while you stop having them. Or vice versa.

Perhaps the difference is that in the first one the mind has more predominance over the heart and in the second one the feelings/emotions are stronger. For this reason, there are moral implications.

Oh well, I am kind of confused now...Am I correct?

Thanks in advance

[Ana laura]

Please Can somebody check it? I'm confused now...

I appreciate your help.

[MaryB]

Quote Ana laura

Hi

Thank you for reply! Let me see if I got this right...

To have a change of mind=to change your opinion/thoughts about something/somebody or to decide to do something else.

To have a change of heart=to change the way you feel about something. At first, you have good/kind feelings towards something or somebody and after a while you stop having them. Or vice versa.

Perhaps the difference is that in the first one the mind has more predominance over the heart and in the second one the feelings/emotions are stronger. For this reason, there are moral implications.

Oh well, I am kind of confused now...Am I correct?

Thanks in advance

Hi AnaLaura, I'm a native speaker from the USA, and yes, that is the way that I've always understood the meaning of the two expressions.

However, one correction: "have a change of mind" doesn't sound natural, this expression is "to change (one's) mind", for example, "he changed his mind".

[Ana laura]

Thank you very much for your reply, Mary! It's clear now.

[susan53]

Can I just say that, as the examples from the concordancers showed, "have a change of mind " is used quite often. As always, never trust your intuition on language - always check with data. Intuitively, I rejected it initially too - but when I checked, there it is in lots of examples.

From intuition alone I do agree with PJB - the example s/he gives seems perfectly possible. But have to say that I didn't find any examples in the data - so I would suggest that in frequency at least it's usually positive to negative.