Articles and Stories

July 27, 2012

We try to protect our loved ones and advise them of danger or problems we perceive. We try to teach our children not to do something as we know that the outcome will not be good. But when it happens despite our warning, we say the dreaded words: I told you so! We often even go as far as to hide our action, so that we do not hear the ‘I told you so!’

Is this also the case in other countries?

The French are not quite as direct in their accusations, they simply say:

– Je t’avais prévenu !  I warned you
– Je vous avais prévenu ! I warned you

The Korean translation is almost identical: 내가 그렇게 몇 번이고 이야기 했잖아!, which back translates into “I have told you so many times!”.

When our Korean team leader visited the States once, he saw a young American mother saying to her child not to wander around in the plane, that the flight attendants do not like that. But her son did not listen and when the attendant took the child by the hand and took him screaming back to his mother, all the mother could say was “I told you so!’ he was then thinking, how similar the same situation would be with any Korean mother.

The Chinese translation of ‘I told you so’, is also quite similar, most people say 你看我说什么来着！, which back translates to ‘Still remember what I said?’

The Chinese also have a custom expression for this instance but it is only suitable for the elders to use. When an elder person sees that a young person is doing something wrong and will have a consequence, he or she often says 不听老人言，吃亏在眼前, which means literally "if you don’t follow what an elder said, you will suffer losses" or simply "listen to your elders". Of course, young couples use the same phrase jokingly to show that they are superior like the elders.

The Japanese translation shows hardly a difference “だからそう言ったでしょ”, which back translates to “As such I said before”.

Polish is a very complex language and never has an easy answer to any simple sentence:

The sentence “A nie mówiłem?” in Polish is actually a rhetorical question. So you can use either an exclamation mark or a question mark at the end.

But when the sentence is spoken by a female it takes the form “A nie mówiłam?”

A slightly longer wording is also possible when the outcome is more severe or significant.

In daily situations among friends, you would use this Polish translation

The Hindi translation sounds almost like a resignation: I told this already!  मैंने कहा था ना

Considering we have lots of different ways to describe something among different languages and cultures, it is quite interesting to find some common expressions in very basic aspects of human nature or relationship.