Re:Why is Canadian English unique?
by maxerickson on Sunday August 23, 2015 @08:56AM
(#10105382)
I grew up in the UP, but never picked up a strong accent (my parents had moved there). Visiting rural Ontario was a quite amusing experience, the use of eh in the UP is occasional and often ironic, in the area I visited, it was punctuation.
I deal with a lot of folks from very northern New England and NY and I find they usually have some canadianisms in their speech pattern. As you say it's not surprising, it's not like accents stop on a dime when a border is reached
At least some Michiganders say "eh", too -- my impression is it is especially common in the UP. It's not at all surprising, the border here has been pretty porous for centuries. When I was a kid, we'd have to cross over to Canada for Chinese food or hard-packed ice cream cones...