My father, who grew up in Israel, raised me speaking Hebrew in the US. Thanks to him, when I came to live in Israel as an adult, I was already equipped with conversational Hebrew. But since my education took place in the States, I was missing some higher-register expressions such as צר לי
– a fancier way of saying I’m sorry than simply אני מצטער
(or אני מצטערת
if the speaker is a female).
צר לי means literally it’s painful to me. צר
– the plural of which is צרות
(troubles, or in Yiddish, tzuris) – may be related to צער
meaning anguish, itself the root of מצטער
.
But enough theory – here’s צר לי in a common Hebrew expression: צר לי לאכזב
