Regular Spelling
Thoughts on language and more

Eh?

It's a common joke that Canadians often use "Eh?" at the end of their sentences, and if you're talking with them you should as well to fit in. In reality, however, that's far from being true, I've spoken to very few people from Canada that do that. Strangely enough, though, I use it far more often.

My use of it is rather interesting, though, I would think. My use of it in speech isn't related to Canada or the US, or English even, but in fact would probably be rooted in my studies of Japanese. I have quite a mix of oddities in my speech related to this, most prominent of which may be my own crossing of 'L's and 'R's in words at time, but "eh?" is a strange case. I would most equate it to the particle "ne". That in itself is is somewhat difficult to explain, at least at the moment it is for me, but it somewhat equates to a rhetorical question, or to mark something as a question that isn't really a question.

That's probably not an entirely accurate description of it, but that is roughly the use of it. In and of itself it is a marker that ends a sentence, so that being the case, would likely be why my speech has picked up some equivalent, namely the "Eh?" expression, to use in speech. I'm sure you could ask anyone at my work, I use it quite a bit myself.


Date posted: 14 January, 2009
Tags: english japanese linguistic
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