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From Sinfest:
Alt text: You know I've always hated her.
It is one of my big annoyances when people confuse "I'm sorry"-sympathy with "I'm sorry"-I-take-responsibility. I sometimes ask for "I'm sorry" not because I think the other person's has done something wrong, but because I'd like them to express sympathy. It's led to some fights or confusion. I ask for "I'm sorry" because it's the simplest way though I suppose I could ask, explicitly, for reassurance in some other phrase since "I'm sorry" is confusing. At least in English. And there are other nuances of "I'm sorry" that interest me. I've been thinking of writing a LJ post about the phrase "I'm sorry" for a few months but I've always lost interest or got distracted.
Are there other ways to say a sympathetic "I'm sorry" differently from a I-take-responsibility "I'm sorry" in other languages? I don't know about Malay...
Alt text: You know I've always hated her.
It is one of my big annoyances when people confuse "I'm sorry"-sympathy with "I'm sorry"-I-take-responsibility. I sometimes ask for "I'm sorry" not because I think the other person's has done something wrong, but because I'd like them to express sympathy. It's led to some fights or confusion. I ask for "I'm sorry" because it's the simplest way though I suppose I could ask, explicitly, for reassurance in some other phrase since "I'm sorry" is confusing. At least in English. And there are other nuances of "I'm sorry" that interest me. I've been thinking of writing a LJ post about the phrase "I'm sorry" for a few months but I've always lost interest or got distracted.
Are there other ways to say a sympathetic "I'm sorry" differently from a I-take-responsibility "I'm sorry" in other languages? I don't know about Malay...
