I've observed that when someone wants to say 'poor thing', they say something like 'kawaii sonna' and I know that kawaii means cute. Can someone please explain? Thanks.
Answer
You are mixing i-adjective かわいい (kawaii, "cute, lovely") with na-adjective かわいそう (kawaisō, "poor, pitiful"). These are simply different, although they share the same etymology. かわいい（かはゆし） actually meant 'pitiful' in old Japanese, but there was a shift in meaning many years ago.
We say おいしそう (oishi-sō, "looks yummy"), たのしそう (tanoshi-sō, "looks amusing"), etc., but we don't say かわいそう to mean "looks cute", because it's confusing. Basically whenever you hear かわいそう (kawaisō), that must mean "poor".
For more information, please refer to this question.
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