Yo, when you coming at? Where you at?

I am so grateful for modern communications. I love getting text messages like the above one from my 16 year old son. When I called to tell him what time I would be there, I also corrected his grammar and politely asked not to be addressed as 'Yo'.

As I began to consider his dilemma though, I realized how complicated our language really is and what a miracle it is that anyone gets it right.

I started off by telling him that we don't say, "When you coming at?", we say "When are you coming?". His question sounded so out of the ordinary until I realized that when I answer, I would say, "I am coming AT 8:30". Then his question made a little more sense. To make matters worse, an acceptable question might have been, "What time are you coming at?" This idea occurred to me after I said that we should never end a sentence with the word "at."

It didn't help much that as I was on my way to meet him later that evening, I got another message that read, "Where you at?" Obviously my instruction on the use of the word "at" didn't sink in. So what should he have said? "Where are you?" would have been appropriate. In this case I couldn't think of a proper sentence that would end in "at" as I could when discussing time of arrival above, but why isn't there one? Is it arbitrary? Do additional unseen rules of language apply in the latter case that didn't in the former or vice-versa?

Through these little questions, I got an insight into the English language and an appreciation for my son's quirky way of speaking, even if I still corrected it.