How to apologize and say sorry in Arabic?

 

Learning Arabic or planning a trip to a Middle Eastern country? You will most likely need to know how to say "I'm sorry" in Arabic. Expressions of apology in Arabic differ from one dialect, situation, and person (female or male) to another. If you are late for a meeting, you should not use the same words if you did something wrong, contrary to instructions, or accidentally bumped into another person. In fact, choosing the right apology word/phrase depends on the type of incident that may require an apology and can affect how your message is perceived by the other party.

While there are plenty of ways to say sorry in Arabic, depending on the context and how formal you want to be, we'll provide you with the most common and most widely used apology phrases in the Arab world:

 

In Arabic, " Sorry " is literally to “asef آسف”. While “Ana” means “I am”.

We use “Ana asef أنا آسف” if the person talking is male.

We use “Ana asefa أنا آسفة” if the person talking is female.

 

 

Simple, isn't it? Well, as a rich language in its own vocabulary, here are some other apologizing expressions upon the situation you are in, with transliteration to see how they are pronounced:

 

To apologize for a mistake or being late, you can say:

-        Ana asef أنا آسف, which means “I’m sorry”.

-        Ana Asifon Jiddan أنا آسف ِجدّا, which means “I’m really sorry”.

-        Maadheratan معذرةً, which means “apologies”.

-        Motaassef متأسف, which simply means “sorry”.

-        Ana A’tadhero lak أنا أعتذر لك, which means “I apologize to you”.

-        Argo an taqbal eetdhary أرجو أن تقبل إعتذاري, which means I hope you accept my apology (formal).

 

If you accidentally step on someone else's shoe or bump into him/her, you say:

 , which means “I apologise”. أعتذر      - Aaatadher

-        La toaakhidhni لا تؤاخذني, which means “sorry”.

 

To ask for forgiveness you can say:

 

-        Saamihnee سامحني, which means “forgive me”.

-        attlobo magfiratak أطلب مغفرتك, which is the formal expression for “forgive me”.

 

If you didn’t catch what someone was saying, you can say:

 

-        Afwan maaza qult? , عفواً، ماذا قُلت؟which means “Excuse me, what did you say?”.

 

To express apology then as an expression of empathy, you can say:

 

-        Ana haq’qan asef أنا حقاً آسف, which means “I’m really sorry”.