The literal translation for"lo siento" is actually "I feel it" - I guess to indicate "I sympathize". Therefore, the term makes sense in some instances of "I'm sorry," but definitely not all. For example: Let's pretend I accidentally spill a glass of red wine on someone's brand new white carpet. Telling them "I feel it" or "I can sympathize" wouldn't really make sense because a) I've never owned a piece of white carpet with a red wine stain and b) I'm not really apologizing for what I did wrong.
Therefore, in instances where "pardon me" might make more sense, people generally say "disculpame" or "I apologize." But sometimes this can be translated more as "excuse me" rather than "please forgive me."
So generally, after chileans make a mistake, they just say "sowry."
I still haven't really figured out exactly when and where to use each apology phrase, so I usually end up blurting out a string of words --
"lo siento!"
oh wait...sorry...i should really say
"disculpame"
no sorry thats not right...crap how do I apologize again?...
oh...right...
"sorry"
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i still don't know how to say "sorry" in italian. they say "mi dispiace" (lit. displeases me) in italian textbooks, but i get weird stares all the time.
when you want to say "pardon me" or "excuse me", you say "scusa(i)mi or simply scusa/i, but you can't use that all the time.
these little things should not be so hard!
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