Where did you come from?

[keannu]

In what cases, can you replace the underlined with "Where did you come from?"?
I guess the two as below.
1. Maybe if your nationality changed by immigration from Peru to America, you may say "I was from Peru, but I immigrated to the USA, so now I'm from America"
2. To refer to people who have already died like Abraham Lincoln - He was from Philadelphia.(I don't know his birthplace)

A : Where do you come from?
B : I was born in Switzerland, but my family moved to South Africa when I was three.

 

[emsr2d2]

Just because you move from Peru to the USA, you don't become "from America". You will always be from Peru. You might have a Peruvian passport and, eventually, an American passport. That simply means you are both Peruvian and American but you are still from Peru.

 

[keannu]

So you mean there is no question like "Where did you come from" for the living?

But what about dead people or ancestors? We could say "Someone in the past was from somewhere", which can match the question "where did he come from?"

 

[emsr2d2]

You can ask someone "Where did you come from?" if they have just arrived somewhere and you want to know where their journey started. If you're talking about a dead person, you'd ask "Where was he from?" if you want something like "Peru" or "Philadelphia" as the answer.

 

[keannu]

How does"Where is he coming from?" differ from "Where did he come from?"

 

[GoesStation]

How does"Where is he coming from?" differ from "Where did he come from?"

In addition to asking about someone's motives, you might ask that if you were in charge of an event to which people were coming from different directions. I'm sending an email about the event to John Smith. Where's he coming from? I want to know whether I should warn him about the weather here. If he's in the region, he'll already know about it.

In this usage, the present continuous casts the sentence into the near future.

 

[Barb_D]

Or if you're helping someone navigate.
Where's he coming from? Uptown? He'll get his connecting train by taking the crossover on his left as he exits the train and the up the stairs. Downtown? He just goes right up the stairs on his right as he exits.