whenever and when

Question

Hi,New2grammar wrote this:CJ, Whenever you are ready, I'm waiting for your answer Here, in this sentence, would I be right if I take 'whenever' as functionally the same as "when"? Then, it would make more sense to write it as this?CJ, when you are ready, I will be waiting for your answer.

Mr Wordy · Accepted Answer

You changed the tense. Did you mean to?

If you meant "When you are ready, I am waiting for your answer." then, yes, it's very similar in meaning to "Whenever you are ready, I'm waiting for your answer.", and the two are often interchangeable. "Whenever" has slightly more of a sense of "any time at all". To me, though, this sentence isn't punctuated correctly. As written, to me it means "At the future time at which you are ready, I am waiting for your answer", which has mixed-up tenses. It only makes sense if "When you are ready" is used in the conversational sense of "You go ahead and do it when you're ready". One punctuation possibility is therefore "When you're ready! I'm waiting for your answer."

"When you are ready, I will be waiting for your answer." can be interpreted in two ways. The first is "When you're ready! I'll be waiting for your answer..." which is slightly unusual (the present tense, "I'm waiting", is more natural). The second is "At the future time at which you are ready, I will be waiting for your answer", which sounds not unreasonable, but is IMO also a slightly unusual thing to say. Something like "When you arrive, I'll be waiting for you." is, in my view, a better sentence with which to illustrate this construction.

whenever and when

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