היכן היית?

English Translation

Where’ve you been?

I have a question: Is this an old word or is this just the same as איפה?

According to people on this HiNative thread:

  • the word איפה is more common in spoken language and היכן in written
  • the word היכן is considered higher language
  • most people who use היכן in a conversation (written or otherwise) are in their 70s

In general, whenever I have a question about the distinction between multiple words in a different language, I do a search for those words together with the English word “or” or “versus”. It usually finds pretty good results.