What does “llevar + tiempo + sin” mean in Spanish?
Cuando tu hija no quiere bañarse
A2 Spanish listening practice · Mexican Spanish · Picked for people who know a little
To say how long something has not happened, Spanish uses llevar + time + sin + infinitive: llevas cuatro días sin bañarte is “you haven’t bathed for four days.” Llevar means “to carry,” but here it counts the time you have been carrying a situation. It is shorter and more natural than building a whole sentence with hace or desde.
A mother tells her daughter llevas 4 días sin bañarte and the argument is about whether it is four days or six. Swap the pieces to say anything: llevo tres horas sin comer (“I haven’t eaten for three hours”), llevamos un año sin vernos (“we haven’t seen each other in a year”). Without sin, llevar + time + gerund counts things that are happening: llevo dos años estudiando español.
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.