Skip to main content

pronunciation - How do Canadians pronounce "eh"?


In a recent post, I was trying to describe Spanish vowels succinctly to an unsophisticated participant, and used the Canadian "eh?" as an example. A participant from the U.S. (California, to be specific) commented, 'I thought Canadian "eh" is pronounced "ey", as a diphthong.'



Question 1a: How do Canadians pronounce "eh?"?


Question 1b: Is it a reasonable approximation of the Spanish pronunciation of the vowel e (as in, for example, bebé)?


Question 2: Is there a better way to explain this (succinctly!) to an unsophisticated participant?



Edit:


For an unsophisticated ELU participant, who is asking, approximately, "Hey, why do non-native English speakers talk different from me?", a very simplified way of explaining that Spanish speakers (the example he gave) pronounce their vowels differently from us. Even if the Canadian "eh?" is not identical to Spanish e as in bebé, is it different enough from the vowel in the English word day to get the point across?



Answer




Question 1a: How do Canadians pronounce "eh?"?



As mentioned before, just like the letter "A" in English. It comes from a shortened form of "hey", which is actually still in use in some regions. "That was a great game of hockey, hey?"



Question 1b: Is it a reasonable approximation of the Spanish pronunciation of the vowel e (as in, for example, bebé)?



No. Not at all close. Some accents do pronounce the interjection interrogative word (word used to "ask when surprised") "ehh" like the "e" in "bebé". But the more common word for this purpose is "huh", which cannot be faithfully rendered in Spanish, but perhaps the closest rendering would be "ja" if you allowed the sound to escape through your nasal passages at the same time as your mouth.



Question 2: Is there a better way to explain this (succinctly!) to an unsophisticated participant?



In Spanish, the Canadian "eh" can just be rendered as "eih", but is pronounced while exhaling, and without the typical Spanish glottal stop preceding the "e".


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.