English Translation
Forgive me!
Would it be an equivalent to “Entschuldigung”?
Not equivalent.
“Entschuldigung” is your everyday “excuse me” or “I’m sorry”, that you say when you bump into someone, or when a minor mishap happened.
“Vergib mir”, I’d say much like the english “forgive me”, weighs much more heavy and is literally asking for forgiveness. There is rarely a reason to say this, except when you did something terrible that is possibly impossible to rectify.
If we want to dig deeper, “entschuldigung” literally is “ent-” (de-) + “Schuld” (guilt). So it’s about removing the guilt - basically the same as “excuse”, while “vergib mir” is accepting the guilt and asking not to be vindictive about it.
Or you could say “Vergib mir, Herr” and sound medieval, or like a minion who truckles before their evil master.
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