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April 15th, 2007, 9:50:34 AM
Say it ain't so, eh?
The signature expression of Canuck-speak may be fading, eh?
Apr 15, 2007 02:30 AM
Patricia Hluchy
Toronto Star
We hardly qualify as the Great White North any more, what with shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap and fewer bitterly cold days. Our historic Hudson's Bay Company is now owned by a Yank, and Tim Hortons has been gobbled up by Wendy's.
Canada's polar bears are vulnerable, our maple syrup is in trouble, and we hardly ever say the word "toque" – let alone wear one – any longer.
Sometimes it seems the only sure, unadulterated Canuck thing that's left is a perky, one-syllable word that has come to symbolize this kinder, gentler, more tentative neighbour of the superpower to the south.
We're talking about "eh," eh.
But all you proud nationalists out there, brace yourselves: "Eh" just might be dying off, too. At least that's what a study by University of Toronto sociolinguist Sali Tagliamonte suggests.
Tagliamonte and her team interviewed 165 native-born, English-speaking Torontonians of all ages to find out how local – and perhaps, by extension, Canadian – English is changing.
The interviews yielded a grand total of 2,272,392 word uses, of which the most common was "I," spoken 114,100 times, followed by "and" at 90,861. The word "like" ranked fifth, at 67,183.
"Eh," however, was used a scant 519 times, accounting for a piddly .02 per cent of the total.
"We were shocked to find it didn't turn up that often," says Tagliamonte. "In more than 2 million words you would expect people to end their sentences in "eh" quite a lot because they're all Canadians, they were all born here, blah, blah, blah.
"But in fact, it's only the old people who do it. Younger people don't use it. They use other things – they use `right' more often than not."
Tagliamonte stops short of saying that "eh" is about to depart from Canadian English. And she notes that the word might still flourish outside the city.
But she also points out that language change tends to spring from younger speakers. And that while her husband, who's closing in on 50, uses "eh" a lot, her three teenage kids won't go near it.
What's more, according to the 2004 edition of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Ontario – along with New Brunswick and Manitoba – is an "eh" stronghold. So it may be that the word is having its last gasp here.
"People get very irate with me when I tell them that people aren't using `eh,'" says Tagliamonte. "They're very attached to their `eh.'"
Surprisingly, that's not the case for Canadian comic Dave Thomas, who's probably best known for playing Doug opposite Rick Moranis's Bob of the hoser, "eh"-spouting McKenzie brothers, who first emerged on the late, great SCTV.
"Honestly, I wish I could give you the answer that Dave Thomas laments the loss of the word `eh,' but I don't really care," the 58-year-old native of St. Catharines said on the phone from Los Angeles, his home since 1986. "It was a character appendage that Rick and I used for Bob and Doug McKenzie that was appropriate to the dialogue that we were lampooning. Beyond that we didn't really use it."
http://www.thestar.com/article/203227
The signature expression of Canuck-speak may be fading, eh?
Apr 15, 2007 02:30 AM
Patricia Hluchy
Toronto Star
We hardly qualify as the Great White North any more, what with shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap and fewer bitterly cold days. Our historic Hudson's Bay Company is now owned by a Yank, and Tim Hortons has been gobbled up by Wendy's.
Canada's polar bears are vulnerable, our maple syrup is in trouble, and we hardly ever say the word "toque" – let alone wear one – any longer.
Sometimes it seems the only sure, unadulterated Canuck thing that's left is a perky, one-syllable word that has come to symbolize this kinder, gentler, more tentative neighbour of the superpower to the south.
We're talking about "eh," eh.
But all you proud nationalists out there, brace yourselves: "Eh" just might be dying off, too. At least that's what a study by University of Toronto sociolinguist Sali Tagliamonte suggests.
Tagliamonte and her team interviewed 165 native-born, English-speaking Torontonians of all ages to find out how local – and perhaps, by extension, Canadian – English is changing.
The interviews yielded a grand total of 2,272,392 word uses, of which the most common was "I," spoken 114,100 times, followed by "and" at 90,861. The word "like" ranked fifth, at 67,183.
"Eh," however, was used a scant 519 times, accounting for a piddly .02 per cent of the total.
"We were shocked to find it didn't turn up that often," says Tagliamonte. "In more than 2 million words you would expect people to end their sentences in "eh" quite a lot because they're all Canadians, they were all born here, blah, blah, blah.
"But in fact, it's only the old people who do it. Younger people don't use it. They use other things – they use `right' more often than not."
Tagliamonte stops short of saying that "eh" is about to depart from Canadian English. And she notes that the word might still flourish outside the city.
But she also points out that language change tends to spring from younger speakers. And that while her husband, who's closing in on 50, uses "eh" a lot, her three teenage kids won't go near it.
What's more, according to the 2004 edition of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Ontario – along with New Brunswick and Manitoba – is an "eh" stronghold. So it may be that the word is having its last gasp here.
"People get very irate with me when I tell them that people aren't using `eh,'" says Tagliamonte. "They're very attached to their `eh.'"
Surprisingly, that's not the case for Canadian comic Dave Thomas, who's probably best known for playing Doug opposite Rick Moranis's Bob of the hoser, "eh"-spouting McKenzie brothers, who first emerged on the late, great SCTV.
"Honestly, I wish I could give you the answer that Dave Thomas laments the loss of the word `eh,' but I don't really care," the 58-year-old native of St. Catharines said on the phone from Los Angeles, his home since 1986. "It was a character appendage that Rick and I used for Bob and Doug McKenzie that was appropriate to the dialogue that we were lampooning. Beyond that we didn't really use it."
http://www.thestar.com/article/203227