Which one is correct, “arrive at home,” “arrived home,” “arrive at my home?.”

Your telecommunication perspective regarding the usage of “I just arrived home” has made me think deeper about the applicability of the verb “arrive” in that sentence. Your English-usage trainer from South Carolina is right, but only because the communication situation is different: the speaker and the listener are most likely in different places and so far away from each other, talking by mobile phone to bridge the distance. The medium, to take a little liberty with Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote, alters not only the message but also the usage.

Now, so we can clarify precisely when the verbs “come home” and “arrive home” are applicable, I have constructed the following two communication scenarios:

Scenario 1: Imagine a woman (W1) in front of a closed door of a house in a Manila suburb. She knocks at the door and a woman from the inside (W2) opens it.

W2: Oh, hi, Carmen! Come in! Come in!
W1: Thanks, Gina, sorry I’m late! My car won’t start so I had to take a cab. What time did you

reach home

?
W2:

Oh, I came home almost an hour ago

. My flight from London arrived half an hour ahead of time.
W!:  So how’s London?
W2: Oh, well, muggy as ever! And it was raining so hard when my plane took off from Heathrow!

Scenario 2: Imagine two women, one an OFW nurse in a hospital cafeteria in Dubai or Oman (W1), and the other a fellow nurse (W2) who has just come home—from a grammatical standpoint, not

arrived home

for sure—in a Manila suburb, plopping herself on the sofa in the living room. Then W2’s mobile phone rings.

W2: Hello!
W1: Hi, Helen, this is Jenny! Where are you now?
W2:

Oh, I just arrived home.

By cab because there’s been a mix-up and no one came to pick me up. I had a very rough flight and my plane arrived an hour late. Grrr!
W1: That’s terrible! It’s a good thing you arrived still in good shape!
W2: Not exactly! It seems my spine has split into two. My balikbayan box was simply too heavy with all those thingamajigs my folks wanted me to bring them!

As we can see, vizvonvan, the usage of “come home” or “arrived home” is clearly a function of the physical distance between the speaker and listeners as well as the telecommunication channel. For third-person accounts of such conversations, the point of view of the narrator would also strongly influence the usage. In any case, I would like to emphasize that Scenario 2 above where the expression “Oh, I just arrived home” is used would be unthinkable without landline phones or mobile phones.