You know something that annoys me about some English people? It's that sometimes when you apologize to them, they'll automatically lean on you to apologize to a third person as well (like your parents if you're a kid). One hates to reward them. It isn't that they're jerks, just that they can't imagine doing it any other way.
(It's pretty easy to apologize for someone else's behavior, of course.)
In Toronto people apologize to me when I bump into them. I often say "It's OK" to ease the situation.
Should governments apologize for past crimes like slavery and the ethnic cleansing suffered by the First Nations? Well, by itself it's only words. But if we aren't willing to say those words that says all too much about us.
The Chinese word for "I'm sorry" is "Duibuqi" or "Duibuzhu." I wonder if the word "dweeb" comes from that?
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