Jan 12, 2018
I have a question about why ごめんなさい doesnt have 私は but it means "I'm sorry"? Are there other phrases that don't include certain words just because of history?
It doesn’t literally translate to “I’m sorry,” it naturalizes into that. It literally means “please forgive me” but that sounds pretty formal in English and ごめんなさい is much more commonly said and suppose to be pretty informal.
Yeah, there are countless other phrases that will do the same thing not necessarily because of history but because things are never 100% translated literally. You would need to know the Japanese grammar in the phrases to be able to discern. In this specific case, the なさい grammar pattern is the big indicator that the subject of the sentence is not the speaker.
