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[ceteranna]

Living with someone who's first language isn't English at the same time as I'm drowning myself in several different languages is totally fascinating. I love Eszter because she's magnificent in general, but apart from prevailing wonderfullness the things that have come up about languages and culture have been especially interesting.

Question #1:

Comments

[signorinakatina]

Well, they mean two different things if you look at the words themselves.

Es tut mir Leid means, literally, "it does me sorrow/distress." If that's what you want to say, then use that one.

Entschuldigung comes also in a verb form, "sich entschuldigen." Schuld means guilt, and the prefix "ent" is all about elimination or "taking off." So the word means "take off guilt." I think "Entschuldigung" is a shortened version of "Ich bitte um Entschuldigung," which is just, "I ask for exculpation." The verb can be conjugated, which may sound more sincere, because it is not as overused: "ich entschuldige mich" or "ich entschuldige mich dafür, dass ich spät bin."

So, one is expressing that you don't feel good about what you just did, the other is asking that your errors be forgiven.

I think German also has the "how'reyou" phenomenon. This summer, the most typical greeting was, "Wie geht's?" or "Hallo, wie geht's?" It became habit. I got it about twenty times a day and said it probably the same number. I would ask it purely because I was used to it, and not because I actually was curious about how things were going for each person.

[signorinakatina]

Also, in the verb form, since it's a verb, you can say:
Ich entschuldige mich (I excuse myself)
Entschuldigen Sie, bitte (Please excuse me)

and so on, which will have different meanings.

[signorinakatina]

Mmm, yes, I'd encountered most of these. But I was curious more about the cultural context of apology than the direct translations; translating a common phrase is easy enough, it's figuring out exactly how and when and with what inflection it's supposed to be used. For example, a French forum I read had someone complaining about how English people misuse apologies; while "j m'excuse" and "pardonnez" and "je suis desolé" do, in fact, mean "I'm sorry," they're just not used as frequently as they are in the U.S. Apologizing when you brush up against someone using any of these phrases would sound funny and exaggerated and foreign, even though they might translate directly into what we would say in English in that context. Kinda like someone brushing up against you and saying in English "Oh, I beg you to forgive me," instead of "Oops, 'scuse me." So yeah, my question was more about cultural context than translation.