To live is to at some time experience loss and in the worst case, the death of a loved one.
One of the most difficult social situations we all face is what to say to someone who has experienced such a loss.
Jane Goodall, the reknown primatologist, spent years studying chimpanzees, their culture and their emotional life.
She made the observation in one of her books that chimpanzees, like humans, find it very easy to share and communicate joy and happiness.
Conversely, chimpanzees find it difficult to share grief, and they demonstrate the same awkwardness that humans do when they try to console one another.
Words are never enough, and we all feel rather useless in such situations. This natural awkwardness that we humans feel is compounded when you are a non-native speaker.
However, you have to say something!
The standard expression is "allow me to offer my condolences." Another commonly heard expression is "I am sorry to hear of your loss" or the slight variation "I am sorry for your loss."
When I was preparing this article, I looked up ご愁傷様 in a Japanese-English dictionary and was quite surprised to see a translation of "I feel [am] sorry for you." This translation, unfortunately, means something else and potentially could get you into a lot of trouble!
The deletion of the "for your loss" can change the meaning completely. "I feel sorry for you" is often used to describe a situation where you may dislike or not respect someone but instead of disliking them, you decide to feel "sorry for them." If, for example, I know someone who is racist because they were raised in a very racist environment, I might feel sorry for them or feel pity for them. However I would not respect them.
If you used the expression "I feel sorry for you" to mean, ご愁傷様, you could potentially cause very hurt feelings in an already delicate situation. Thus, "I am sorry to hear of your loss" is what you want to say. A student of mine once asked about the phrase, "It is a pity that . . ." for ご愁傷様. My answer to him was an emphatic "NO." "It is pity that . . ." is for much less profound or serious situations like "it's a pity that you were unable to attend the concert, the pianist was wonderful."
The phrases that I have touched upon up until now are appropriate in social situations, but what about a "professional" situation. While I want to emphasize here that my objective is not to give medical professionals who are non-native speakers of English guidance or advice on how to inform family that a patient has died (or to put it more delicately "passed away"), allow me to make a few suggestions and observations.
Doctors or medical staff informing family about the death of their loved one do not generally "offer condolences." Instead, they might say "I regret to inform you that your father/mother/wife/husband did not make it" or "I am so sorry to tell you that father/mother/wife/husband has passed away." The expression "did not make it," while it sounds very simple, maybe even too simple, is actually a gentle way of telling someone that a loved one has died without using the word "death" or "died."
The more I worked on this entry of Wordology, the more uncomfortable I became. I do not want to pretend that I am an expert on the use of language related to death. I became keenly aware that Dr. Goodall really was right when she noted that we primates have trouble interacting with others about death and grief. Ironically for a topic in a column called "Wordology," this area is one where words often fail us! |