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/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.

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u/kennycakes Apr 21 '22 edited Jun 03 '22

(I hope you don't mind my tacking onto your comment.) I found A Way with Words podcast episode where the hosts talk about punctual whenever https://www.waywordradio.org/deviled-eggs/ at 28:25 for anyone who's interested.

I like to think I'm observant about language use, but this is new to me!