Thursday, January 03, 2008

The Canadian eh

A book designed to help integrate new Canadians and teach them English recommends an easy shortcut to sounding casual and Canadian: use eh. But it's a little more complex than that. According to Richard W. Bailey in an article on Canadian English (one of only a few; this broad area of study has been sadly neglected) there are six uses for 'eh' and according to another scholar, Walter Avis, there are eight different uses of this simple sound. Are the poor followers of that book to venture into the labyrinth of 'eh' usage without any further indication as to when such an interjection is appropriate? It is unfortunate that they are not pointed to one or other of these two erudite explanations because, although they may not get much out of them besides confusion, at least they will realize that there is more than one use for what at first has been presented as a catch-all. For our own edification, however, I shall briefly outline some of the various uses these two letters--and indeed but one vowel sound--are put. For this list I shall quote Bailey's article mentioned above.

...eh is abundant in British, American, and Canadian English and also occurs in Australia and South Africa. In all these places the functions of eh are diverse:
as a question tag ("hey, Barry, you have a cold one for me tonight, eh?"),
as a reinforcer ("call me Alex, eh?"),
and in elliptical statements of various kinds ("see you eh?" and "you won't eh?"). Assuming that the historical attestations are reliable, eh does not have its origin in Canada, and in only one function is it more common in Canada than elsewhere--in [the] "narrative eh." In this use, which may occur "with disconcerting frequency," eh serves in place of a hesitation vowel or, implicitly, as a request for confirmation of the speaker's assumptions: "He's holding onto a firehose, eh? The thing is jumping all over the place, eh, and he can hardly hold onto it, eh? Well, he finally loses control of it, eh, and the water knocks down half a dozen bystanders."...eh is clearly widespread across the country across social classes. Both by its use in narrative contexts and by its relatively high frequency, it qualifies as a "Canadianism" and serves as one of the "distinctive" features of Canadian English.

I love the tone of the illustrations. Those are quite profound statements and that story about the routing of innocent bystanders with firehose almost moved me to tears... I don't know if this is a coincidence but most of those uses (perhaps from the informality implicit in the use of 'eh') I associate with a lower class or education level (as illustrated in the subject matter of the examples). I do use 'eh' on occasion. Generally the question tag or elliptical statement varieties when in an informal situation. There is much more tied to the idea of when, where and how to use 'eh' than the straightforward idea of using it more to sound more Canadian. Perhaps it would contribute to helping with integration with one group in society but not so much with another. This topic is much more complex than it may seem on first inspection. I have only explored some small side issues connected with it and I imagine further studies would be quite interesting. But I have not time or scope on this blog to continue much more than what I have already.
So I'll leave it with that, eh?

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