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I'm from the northern Wisconsin, so I have spent a fair number of summers visiting my country's northern neighbor for fishing trips. While it is stereotyped that Canadians say "eh" a lot at the end of sentences, I really had yet to notice it in conversation.
However, on my most recent adventure across the border, while stopped at customs, the Canadian border agent continually ended statements or questions with "eh".
My question... do you think he was playing around, an inside joke with friends perhaps (like in the movie Super Troopers when they play the "meow game", if you're familiar) or do some people just say "eh" a lot more than others, and I just happened to meet one?
It's exaggerated in movies and if you had somebody saying "ya'll" after everything they said, the context of how it was said would determine whether it's a joke.
"Eh" tends to be associated with rural, working class Canada.
Not all of us do it, but a it is a somewhat common expression for many of us. Common enough that we are sterotyped with it. When you live with it you don't even notice it. The main expression I find in the states is that many people say 'Uh-uh'.
Some people say it quite a bit. Now, if he had done that while wearing a hockey uniform, with a beaver sitting in his lap, and a mountie dressed as Dudley Doright standing behind him, then he'd probably have been pulling your leg.
I live in a big city here and am a university graduate, worked in a large museum where I have encountered many people from many places, and I catch myself saying 'eh' sometimes just as 'what do you think?' or its a statement of no more importance than making a statement on the weather. I wonder if anyone moves here from another country and ends up saying it - lol!
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Guilty as charged.
