How to use ‘whenever‘, ‘wherever‘, ‘whatever‘, ‘whoever‘ and ‘however‘

 'whenever', 'wherever', 'whatever', 'whoever' 和 'however' 用法

At the beginning, let's see some examples and try to understand them.

1. With online course, we can study whenever and wherever we want.
2. Whatever you do, do not break your promise.
3. Judges punish whoever breaks the law.
4. Some party lies however they can.

Add you can see, adding 'ever' to these question words can make sentences have a broader possibility of times, places, things or people. Let's go through them one by one.

 

whenever /wenˈevər/

conjunction at any or every time that

Whenever floods happen, people suffer tens of millions of dollars' worth of damage.

adverb  at any time : at whatever time

I can apply for a work visa tomorrow or whenever.

 

wherever /werˈevər/

conjunction   at, in, or to any place that

Nepotism occurs wherever he is in charge.

adverb   in, at, or to any place

They could have gone to the park, a beauty salon, (or) wherever.

 

whatever /wətˈevər/

pronoun  anything or everything that

Take whatever you need!

determiner  all the, any or any that

He fakes whatever paintings that are valuable.

 

whoever /huːˈevər/

pronoun the person or people who; any person who

Forward this email to whoever is in charge of product development.

 

however /haʊˈevər/

conjunction   in whatever manner or way

We boil corn however we like.

adverb  to whatever degree or extent : no matter how 

She couldn't get a teaching certificate, however hard  [=no matter how hard]  she tried.

Note

The senses here are different from the meaning that expresses contrast.

 

As you may know, these words have their stress on the next-to-last syllable.