A question about time

[Mohammad1223]

When you arrive at the airport , call me
When you are arriving at the airport , call me
Are they both right? , and if not why?

 

[emsr2d2]

1. When you arrive at the airport, call me.
2. When you are arriving at the airport, call me.

Are they both right? [STRIKE], and[/STRIKE] If not, why not?

Welcome to the forum. :hi:

Please note my corrections above. Don't put a space before a comma, and always remember to end a sentence with one appropriate punctuation mark.

Sentence 1 is correct. Sentence 2 isn't completely wrong but it's not natural.

 

[Tarheel]

Perhaps most likely:

Call me when you get there.

 

[emsr2d2]

Perhaps most likely:

Call me when you get there.

That loses the specific information that "there" is an airport.

 

[Tarheel]

That loses the specific information that "there" is an airport.

That is true. But 99.9% of the time the two people would know that one of them is going to the airport, and in that context the word "airport" would not need to be mentioned. (Nowadays there would be no need to call when I got there. I'd be texting the person on the way there.)

 

[jutfrank]

The difference is that the first sentence focus on calling after the person arrives whereas the second sentence focuses on calling as the person arrives.

At many airports, you are allowed to turn your phone on only after you arrive, so only sentence 1 is likely to be appropriate.

You might use the second sentence if you're asking the person to call you just as their plane is about to land, for instance. In this scenario, although the person has not fully arrived yet, they are in the process of arriving.

 

[emsr2d2]

At the moment, we have no idea if the person who is due to arrive at the airport is arriving there by plane or coming some other way. For all we know, the speaker could be about to board a flight and is talking to someone who will be coming to meet them.

As always, context is important.

 

[jutfrank]

At the moment, we have no idea if the person who is due to arrive at the airport is arriving there by plane or coming some other way. For all we know, the speaker could be about to board a flight and is talking to someone who will be coming to meet them.

As always, context is important.

True, but that's not particularly relevant to the main point I made in post #6.

I just took the scenario I did as an illustrative example.

 

[emsr2d2]

I agree, and it's also not relevant to the grammatical correctness of "When you arrive at the airport, call me". That sentence is absolutely fine. Context only became important when the airport was removed from the equation in post #3.

 

[Yankee]

When you arrive at the airport , call me
When you are arriving at the airport , call me
Are they both right? , and if not why?

"When you arrive" = At the moment of arrival.
"When you are arriving"= As you approach.