Languages are gateways into cultures.
They can really give you a sense of what matters to a particular group of people.
And what doesn’t.
In Spanish, for example, there’s not really an obvious or direct translation of the word deadline. Make of that what you will.
Equally, though, we English-speakers don’t have an equivalent of their word sobremesa.
Sobremesa is the time spent at the table after the eating has finished. It’s the conversation, the relaxing, the debating, the laughing, the drinking, the storytelling and the jokes; the time spent enjoying each other’s company.
At my most romantic, I’d like to think that a good sobremesa might be the definition of what it means to be human.
At the very least, it’s what bank holidays were made for.
Ironically then, if you're after a sobremesa of your own next weekend one deadline you will want to meet is being online bright and breezy on Wednesday morning. The market opens at 7am.
Because it turns out that the answer to the question posed by The Cranberries way back in 1993 is a big, fat ‘yes’.
We should, in fact, let it linger.
Nick