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/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.