Yow Sun
The title is my transliteration of a Chinese phrase which someone told me today, and I think it could come in quite useful.
I was recently confronted with an unusual situation. A friend of mine had a cold, so took some Lemsip capsules, unaware that they contained tartrazine, to which he was acutely allergic. He relayed his experience to me at about half one in the morning, doped up on the adrenaline the hospital had to use to get his lungs going again.
“I nearly died!” he told me.
What do you say to that?! If someone’s died, you’ve got to be sombre, serious and sad (unless they were a homocidal dictator or something), and if someone’s alive, you don’t say anything. So, for near-death? Comiserations on how horrible the whole thing must’ve been, or congratulations on managing not to? Or even “better luck next time”!?
When I split up with Liz last week, about 90% of people said “I’m sorry.” Now, I know their hearts were in the right places, but I still haven’t worked out a response to that yet. “Thank you” doesn’t really scan, and “don’t be sorry!” is rather mean if they’re trying to be sympathetic.
Therefore, in future, I shall say “yow sun”. It translates as a kind of expression of sympathy, in a kind of “aww, that’s very sad, would you like a hug?” sort of way. Thus, it expresses my sympathy and can be more readily responded to by the poor already-emotionally-stressed sod who doesn’t need the added anxiety of thinking up things to say. And, as a bonus, it will probably lead to a lengthy conversation along the lines of this ‘blog entry when they ask me to explain what the Hell it is I’m talking about.
If any Chinese people would like to suggest a better spelling, go for it!
November 27th, 2004 at 21:59
Er. What exactly does it mean?
November 28th, 2004 at 00:18
Ah. Ooops. It is/are a word(s) which expresses your sympathy in a kind of “aww, that’s very sad, would you like a hug?” sort of way. Which on re-reading isn’t very clear…
But it’s significantly better than “I’m sorry” - after all, it’s not like it’s usually the apologee’s fault.
I’ve now edited it to make it a bit clearer. And I think I’ll do it again in the morning to make it clearer still, but I’m too tired!
This is why it’s very important to have proof-readers.