Scots-Irish “Whenever”

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Well, thank you for saying so.

This is Matt Bracey calling from Dallas, and I have a question.

Well, I’m perplexed by a certain choice of words I’ve heard lately, and I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve just noticed it recently or if it’s some kind of a new usage in our culture that I’m just not aware of.

Okay.

Or maybe it’s regional.

I’m originally from Southern California, where I know you are, and now live in Texas, but I’ve been in Texas for a number of years.

So it may just be a new awareness I have.

But here’s the story.

It’s the choice of words between when or whenever.

And I’ll give you an example.

I’ve heard this recently by lots of folks.

And they say it so naturally that it must be something that’s ingrained in them.

But, for instance, let’s talk about a surprise birthday party.

He went to his house on his birthday, and whenever he opened the door, his friends yelled, surprise.

I think that should be when and not whenever.

But I am perplexed, and I know that you are the people that can help me.

So they use whenever when you feel like they should use when.

Yeah, exactly.

I think that whenever sort of describes sort of a general rule, like, you know, whenever I walk in my door at night, my dog jumps up on me.

Right.

But if I talk about last night, it would be when I walked in my door, my dog jumped on me.

Right, right.

Whenever my dog died, yeah.

Yeah, right.

So do you have this, Martha?

Let’s just ask the southern woman in the room.

Do you have this speech feature?

No, I do not.

But you know people that do, I bet.

I do.

All right.

And family members, he’ll say whenever, where you or I or Matt would say when.

When, correct.

Okay.

Correct.

For a single event.

Okay.

Very good.

Yeah.

We have some data on this, and this is thanks to the research that’s in the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English.

And that’s not to say, Matt, that this is solely from the Smoky Mountains or Appalachia or any place like that.

It’s definitely a Southernism.

And one of the editors, Michael Montgomery, has said in the American Dialect Society’s email list, he said that he believes that this particular speech feature comes into American English from the Scotch-Irish immigrants.

And so you will find this in American English where the Scotch-Irish immigrants tend to have settled.

And so that includes large parts of the South.

It includes Appalachia.

It includes folks as far north as the Ohio River Valley and so forth.

I mean, the Ohio River Valley, you’ll hear me mention it all the time, is often a dividing line between different kinds of speech.

United States. And he’s got a great entry.

He has citations as far back as the 1930s on this of people using exactly like you’re talking about.

Here’s an old one. What did they do with you whenever you killed that man two or three years ago?

Yeah. How many times did that happen? Right.

So clearly it’s a case where he only killed the man once, right? But yet they use the word whenever.

Yeah. So it’s the influence of history there on the language.

That’s right. Yeah. It came over on the boats, so to speak, with the immigrants who settled here.

And like a lot of the things that we use and a lot of the ways that we talk in American English, that has just happened to stick with us, or some of us.

So it’s a regional, it’s a dialect feature.

I wouldn’t call it wrong because it is perfectly comprehensible among the people who use it.

It’s just that when two dialects encounter each other, we have this negotiation and this renegotiation where we’re starting to say, oh, when you say whenever, I would say when.

Now I got you.

We have all those mini Eureka moments.

Yeah.

The book that I mentioned, I highly recommend anyway for this and other things.

It’s the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English.

It’s bedside reading for me.

I mean, there’s all kinds of great stuff, like what they call moonshine in the mountains, panther sweat, splow juice because it makes your head splow.

There’s great, great poetic stuff in this dictionary, Matt.

I really recommend it.

Oh, fantastic.

I think I know what I want on my Christmas list.

All right.

And, you know, even better, unlike almost every other dictionary in the country, because Michael Montgomery has thick glasses, he made sure they printed it in large type, which I think is great.

I love it.

No pictures, though.

Matt, thank you so much for calling.

Well, thank you so much for your help.

I really appreciate it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Okay.

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