The informant explains the difference between “Peruvian Time” and “English Time”.
A: I didn’t know this was an actual thing until I looked it up. If you say– if you invite someone over to, like, a dinner party or whatever, if you say it’s at six it’s customary for people to show up thirty minutes to an hour later up to two hours later. And it’s not considered, like, a problem. They call it, “You’re arriving at Peruvian time”.
It’s because, during dinner parties, if you say at six, you don’t expect to serve anything until eight anyways. And if you say, uh, show up at English time, you show up on time.
Thoughts:
When hearing this, I understood why people would show up to functions an hour to an hour and a half late. The party isn’t in fully swing, and dinner usually isn’t served until an hour or two into the event. However, I found it incredibly hilarious that if you want someone to show up on time, you have to say, “Show up on English time”. This gives me the imagine that Americans are seen as these very punctual, straight laced people by Peruvians.