What is the source of people saying 'whenever' instead of 'when'? I just heard a woman on the BBC Antiques Roadshow say "My mother left them to us whenever she passed away.'
@kevin Yeah I looked this up a whole back because I was shocked when I read some quote from Simone Biles where she said. "Whenever I was younger I used to..."
This post calls it the "punctual whenever" and attributes it to Western Pennsylvania, but I think Simone Biles is from Houston and the article I was reading was about her connection to Belize, so it must have spread further than that.
@kevin @pganssle I see Mike already shared that, so here's some DARE and OED citations: https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2023/01/whenever.html
@hugovk @pganssle I suspect this is similar to other 'misusage' of various terms which have inherent meanings related to one-time and ongoing states. For example, "Since I've been born, ..." and "He never had that high enough" (recent phrasing used by golf announcers referring to missed putts on a green).
@kevin @pganssle 'In their article “My Mother, Whenever She passed Away, She Had Pneumonia: The History and Functions of whenever,” Michael Montgomery and John Kirk discuss the “punctual” whenever, a vestige of Scots-Irish usage heard in much of the Southern United States, Appalachia, and the Midwest'
3 min radio segment:
https://waywordradio.org/punctual-whenever/