differences
Are there any differences between these phrases for example in the following sentence:
a) I did my homework the whole day.
b) I did my homework all day.
c) I did my homework all day long.
And what is a specific difference between ''all day'' and ''all day long''?
“Whole” comes from “unhurt”, and means a single object that has not been subdivided.
“Entire” comes from “complete”, and means no part has been left out.
They are different when you are talking about collections of objects; the entire lot of cars, or the entire staff, since these are collections of distinct objects. You would say a whole loaf of bread or a whole person, since these are single objects not usually considered a collection of parts.
The expression “whole life” considers one’s life to be a single unit that has not been subdivided. An “entire life” means all the parts (years? experiences?) of a life. In this case either could be used.
I believe this is called Canadian Raising.
Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which certain diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants (e.g., /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, /f/).
/aɪ/ (the vowel of "eye") becomes [ʌɪ] or [ɐɪ], while the outcome of /aʊ/ (the vowel of "loud") varies by dialect, with [ʌu] more common in the west and a fronted variant [ɛʉ] commonly heard in Central Canada. In any case, the /a/-component of the diphthong changes from a low vowel to a mid-low vowel ([ʌ], [ɐ] or [ɛ]).
Below is an excerpt of the possible origin paragraph in the Wikipedia article.
Some have hypothesized that Canadian raising may be related historically to a similar phenomenon that exists in Scots and Scottish English. The Scottish Vowel Length Rule lengthens a wide variety of vowel sounds in several environments, and shortens them in others; "long" environments include when the vowel precedes a number of voiced consonant sounds. This rule also conditions /aɪ/ in the long environments and /əɪ/ in the short environments. Significantly, though, the Scots Vowel Length Rule applies only before voiced fricatives and /r/, whereas Canadian raising is not limited in this fashion; thus, it may represent a sort of merging of the Scots Vowel Length Rule with the general English rule lengthening vowels before voiced consonants of any sort.
The most common understanding of the Great Vowel Shift is that the Middle English vowels [iː, uː] passed through a stage [əɪ, əʊ] on the way to their modern pronunciations [aɪ, aʊ]. Thus it is difficult to say whether Canadian raising reflects an innovation or the preservation of an older vowel quality in a restricted environment.
Best Answer
Those three phrases mean the same thing in almost any circumstance that I can think of. They are all ambiguous too.
All day to one person may be a few hours, to another a full work day, maybe daylight hours to another person, and maybe another person would say it means during all waking hours. I could give you examples all day (which would be a few minutes before I get bored).
So all three of those phrases could mean any of the examples above or something in between. Also when someone says they did something like their homework all day long, that may mean that they had their homework out while they watched t.v., went out for lunch, or talked on the phone. All day is often exaggerated and the only way to truly know what happened is being there or having solid context.