Eh Thought

To begin, I'd like to say that I believe the details of your accent can change when you move to a different region. My college friends for example, tell me that when I first came from Wisconsin I had a pretty strong accent. Which I lost a bit, over time. Just little changes, like going from saying roof with o's pronounced like "foot", to the more mainstream roof with o's like "tool".

I also remember a conversation with my friend Laura, who had at the time semi-recently moved to Alaska. Laura had also noticed that her Midwest accent was in jeopardy. We agreed to work to retain/reclaim our accents, softening our vowels and the like. I actually had the chance to rebuild my accent - I lived in Chicago for part of 2006 and noticed my Wisco-ness reasserting itself - but my time here in Toronto has erased all that. In its place, Toronto has given me the gift of "eh".

At least, I think it has. I've noticed "eh" creeping into my conversations lately, but I can't tell if it's new or not. It feels so natural. A colleague comes in to work looking a little tired: "So you had a late night, eh?" Oliver complains of a stomachache: "Looks like someone's been hitting the chocolate, eh?" My eh's are all a sort of sarcastic, jokey, Sherlock-Holmes-just-revealed-the-culprit eh's, not at all what I picture when I think of the traditional, mocked eh. You know, the farmer saying things like "looks like rain, eh?"

When we leave Canada, I imagine the eh will stay behind. I like the idea of keeping it, though. I think it would be lovely if I took some bits of regional color from every place I lived. Created my own accent.