This morning for her English class homework, Pati was having to translate all kinds of payment letters and sales notices from English into Spanish, so we kept running into phrases like "your payment is due" or "your payment is overdue" or "your payment is 8 weeks overdue."
After being confused that the dictionary didn't have any exact translations, I kept trying to explain to her: "You know, when you are supposed to pay something by a certain date? Or you're supposed to return something by a certain date and then you don't? And then it's a problem because you were supposed to pay or return the thing earlier? You're late and it's bad? Because there was an important deadline that you didn't follow? You know?"
Pati just gave me a blank look and said, "I don't think we have a word for that in Guatemala."
And come to think of it, that really shouldn't surprise me.
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