Do people in Ukraine, especially Kyiv, sometimes say "Sorry, Michael" instead of "sorry"? Supposedly, this expression comes from some movie?
Thank you in advance.
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could you elaborate a bit? how does it sound?– P. Vowk ♦Commented Mar 25, 2019 at 12:14
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1They don't unless the one they are apologizing to is actually Michael. And then it's not slang at all :-)– EngurooCommented Mar 25, 2019 at 12:24
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1@user1985 it might be some subculture thing. Like people who watch the same US movie and then start saying something from that movie. I'll ask a couple of people about it and let you know.– P. Vowk ♦Commented Mar 25, 2019 at 15:05
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2@P. Vowk♦ You might be right. She watched and still watches a lot of American sitcoms, shows, movies etc.– user1985Commented Mar 25, 2019 at 15:20
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2@bytebuster it's hard to define, what's Ukrainian language, and what's not. The only problem I see here is that we don't know whether this girl is a Russian or Ukrainian speaker.– P. Vowk ♦Commented Mar 26, 2019 at 14:07
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2 Answers
It's some rarely-used meme. Despite living in Kyiv, I've never heard it before. Searching through Internet shows few Russian-language references (though it doesn't mean that Ukrainian-speaking people don't use it; also the area of this meme is unclear for me: either it's used in Ukraine only, or in larger area like ex-USSR).
The full phrase seems to sound like:
Sorry, Michael, [it's] just business.
I've found two versions about it's origin:
It's a distorted phrase from The Godfather (1972) movie:
(which might sound like “Sorry, Sonny, it's just business” in some localizations). Despite this phrase is directed to Sonny, not to Michael — Michael Corleone is actually the one who says it — but it got strongly associated to Michael.
Source: this discussion.
(Similar phrase also seems to appear in The Godfather videogame.)
It's from one of anecdotes about Vovochka. Vovochka is a Little Johny-like character of anecdotes, popular since the Soviet era. Some of these anecdotes are political and mock specific-day realities (though often such anecdotes outlive their context and get new names/references/etc when the original context becomes outdated), other are just about human relationships.
The specific anecdote is:
(Somewhere in USSR, Russia or etc during lesson in school.)
Teacher: “Who is the most popular person?”
Vovochka: “Michael Jackson!”
Teacher: “No, you're wrong. It's…” — teacher voices the name of a that-day official authority (Brezhnev, Putin or etc) and continues: “Vovochka, you get the lowest mark!”The next day…
Teacher: “Who is the most popular person?”
Vovochka: “Michael Jackson!”
Teacher: “No, you're wrong. You get the lowest mark again!”The next day…
Teacher: “Who is the most popular person?”
Vovochka voices a name of that-time authority.
Teacher: “Excellent! You get the highest mark!”
Vovochka (stealthily taking Michael Jackson's portrait from his schoolbag and looking onto it with great regret: “Sorry, Michael, it's just business…”Source: this blog item.
Which one of these versions is correct (and maybe none of them, the meme might come from another movie or another source) — I don't know.
Very likely it is a reference to the first episode of Black Mirror, where the UK PM had to f**k a pig so the villain would let the Princess go. And when eventually all the strives to find the villain/princess failed, one of the other ministers said to the PM "sorry, Michael, but you have to do it". Although it might very well not be the case )))
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1Welcome to the site! I don't think that's the origin of the phrase. I've heard it way before the Black Mirror episode came out. The version from Vovochka joke (as cited by Sasha) seems the most probable to me.– kaamosCommented Oct 29, 2019 at 17:52