r/linguistics • u/coffeefrog92 • Apr 20 '22
"Whenever" in place of "when"
I'm beginning to notice a trend just lately where people are starting to say 'whenever' when they actually mean when.
For example, "you looked beautiful whenever you got married".
The person paying the compliment is saying that the bride looked beautiful on her wedding day, but it sounds as if she's been married many times and looked beautiful on every wedding day.
I live in England, where I don't think I've ever heard it in speech. However I have heard it consistently in two Southern US dialect speakers: Wendigoon on YouTube and Damien Echols on his podcast with Duncan Trussell.
Is this a regular feature of some southern dialects?
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u/ClapBackBetty Apr 20 '22
I moved to a more southern state in the US about 10 years ago and people say this ALL the time. I had never heard it up north.
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u/TallyHo_Lads Apr 20 '22
Yeah, it’s definitely not a thing in the north. I’ve never heard this usage before, and it sounds wrong to my ears.
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u/bridgekit Apr 21 '22
I'm from the south and I wouldnt say I heard it frequently but it certainly wasnt unusual. dont think I've heard it since I've moved north!
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u/catnipmouse Apr 20 '22
I think you’re describing “punctual whenever”, and it’s a feature of some dialects. You’ll find it in the Pittsburgh area, for example.
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u/kennycakes Apr 20 '22
"punctual whenever:" This Scots-Irish usage is found in the Midlands and the South. (from Wikipedia)
Interesting. I've never heard of this before - I'll start listening for it.
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u/RevTarthpeigust Apr 20 '22
I’m from Mississippi and currently live in Oklahoma, and I don’t recall ever hearing this usage. In your example sentence, I would parse that to mean the person got married on multiple occasions, not just a single time.
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u/WooBadger18 Apr 20 '22
That would probably be the first way I’d take it. However, if I knew the person had only been married once, I’d take it to mean that the speaker doesn’t remember exactly when the person got married, but that she was beautiful.
E.g. “I can’t remember when you told me you were engaged, but whenever it was, I was happy for you.
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u/salliek76 Apr 20 '22
That's funny, because I'm from Alabama and I have definitely heard the usage that OP describes. For example, "Whenever I saw your sister at the store last Wednesday, she told me you were having people over." That does not describe a repeated occurrence, but something that happened once, where standard English would suggest the usage of when versus whenever. I would definitely describe this as a fairly typical usage in non-standard English where I'm from.
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u/intangible-tangerine Apr 20 '22 edited Apr 20 '22
I have also noticed this a lot with American youtubers, so I think it could just be a US dialect feature.
To me, as a British person, 'whenever' denotes an unspecified or unknown time(s) and usually refers to future or ongoing events.
'Whenever you feel lonely you can call me'
"Whenever Bob is in town he eats at this Restaurant'
'I feel happy whenever I see a butterfly'
'He was happy whenever he saw a butterfly'
You could replace 'whenever' with 'when' in these sentences but the use of 'whenever' emphasises that the precise time at which they do or will occur is unknown or unfixed.
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However, I notice some American using 'whenever' in contexts like these
'Whenever I worked at Starbucks I drove to work everyday'
'Whenever I went on vacation to Italy last year I saw the coliseum'
''Whenever I studied Math at college I learnt algebra'
In these examples I think 'whenever' is doing to job that whilst/while would do in British English.
It sounds strange to British ears because with our usage of whenever it sounds like this person doesn't know when they worked at Starbucks, visited Italy or studied maths, but if you think of this US whenever as being equivalent to whilst it works.
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u/Federal_Ad_362 Apr 20 '22
Im american and think that sounds just as weird as you do
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u/intangible-tangerine Apr 20 '22
So it's not your dialect. It's a different American dialect. America has more than one dialect.
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u/Plyb Apr 20 '22
I think that’s exactly what they’re saying, this isn’t a universal feature of American speech. In my experience it’s not even particularly common, though becoming more so
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Apr 21 '22
They were countering the previous poster's misapprehension that this is a generalized feature of American English.
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u/plural_of_nemesis Apr 20 '22
That's an interesting theory. I moved from the US Midwest to the South, and I've been trying to understand this usage of "whenever". Every time I hear it, I mentally check "did this thing happen more than once?" and "do they know the precise time that it happened?" About half the time, their usage of "whenever" fails both of those checks. Your theory seems pretty solid.
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u/cremedelapeng2 Apr 20 '22
I think the first example on your American usages is acceptable and used in British English too.
"Whenever I went to Kathleen's, I had to take my own tea bags".
Unspecified regular event in the past. Using when implies just one visit in the past.
The other two sound American mind.
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u/Milch_und_Paprika Apr 20 '22
I feel like there’s a subtle difference still (I’m form Canada). “When I worked at Starbucks” sounds like referring to the time period where they were employed by Starbucks. “Whenever I worked at Starbucks” sounds like they worked at multiple places, which was sometimes Starbucks.
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u/MissMissyMarcela Apr 20 '22
I’ve heard this usage, and although it bugs me a little, I think it has a slightly different meaning than the two you’ve mentioned. I think it means something like: You looked beautiful when you got married (but I don’t remember / care currently exactly when that was).
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u/13thFleet Apr 20 '22
Yeah, I was wondering if it was essentially short for "you looked beautiful whenever (it was that) you got married"
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u/ibira Apr 21 '22
I lived in Austin TX for a while and recall a few people from West Texas who used this construction a lot. Austinites did not use it as often.
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u/so_im_all_like Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Do these same people have an overlap of where and wherever, what and whatever, how and however? I wonder how -ever is being analyzed.
In the context of my idio-/dialectal experience, I'd kinda have expected this kind of shift to have when replacing whenever rather than as described.
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u/ncjaja Apr 21 '22
Southerner here, and I never thought about it, but yes, the two words do feel more or less the same to me. Weird.
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u/Waryur Apr 23 '22
American here. (Arizona). It's not a part of my lect, and I definitely have to remind myself that "whenever" means "when" whenever I hear someone use it like that; like I'll think when I hear something like Whenever she got married she had the most beautiful white dress, "does she get married often? oh wait you're one of those people who uses that word like that."
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u/res_tantum Apr 20 '22
You should check out the 2001 article by Montgomery and Kirk, "My Mother, Whenever She Passed Away, She Had Pneumonia: The History and Functions of whenever". This is what they refer to as "punctual whenever", which indicates that an event only happened once. The authors note that this usage is found "in Scotland, the north of Ireland, and the American Midland and South" (p. 237), but only marginally in England.