Eh? Louder, Please

Ain't diplomacy interesting? To avoid the perception of insult, of casual obliviousness to the courtesies to be extended while visiting another country, politicians, bureaucrats, businesspeople and diplomats inform themselves of the niceties of human interaction obtaining in the country they're travelling to.

Briefing notes are put together by knowledgeable interveners, and distributed to those who can best make use of them. To ensure few embarrassing incidents occur. People don't, after all, want to appear boorish when visiting abroad. You wouldn't think that Canadian civil tradition is that markedly different from that in the United States, however.

We share, in some part, similar values and customs. We do have different political systems and those of our judiciary, as befits different countries with different cultural and political exposures in their developing years as singular nations. By and large, however, it's often more our accents that give us away as visitors, rather than our cultural behaviours.

And although the guide advises that a firm handshake on introduction is anticipated; that sunglasses should be removed indoors, along with hats, one might reasonably anticipate that these niceties are prevalent anywhere in the West, not just in Canada. And as for the descriptions of Canadians placing importance on education, skill, modesty and politeness, is that too not universal?

Still, the U.S. State Department must have felt it a requirement to prepare briefing notes for those American diplomatic and political functionaries that would be accompanying President G.W. Bush to Canada a few years back. His delegation was provided with a protocol guide to ensure that the foreigners in Canada they would be exposed to did not completely flummox them by their curious use of language.

One signal piece of advice was how to interpret Canadians' favourite sentence-suffix. As in nice day, eh? As though affirmation was required, but is in fact redundant; the speaker assuming the hearer to be in complete agreement with the obvious. "Eh", the guide explains, should be pronounced "ay". As in "aye aye", captain. But not "I"; "A". Got that?

"Used mostly in rural areas", explains the guide, the expression is roughly translated as "You know?", or "Isn't it?". To which I say, oh, really? In fact, "eh" can mean just about anything, but it does mean acquiescent agreement to anything that has been stated. And funny thing that; with the acknowledgement that it's a rural colloquialism, why bother entering that quaint expression into the guide to begin with?

It isn't as though President Bush or his entourage would be travelling in the countryside being exposed to Canadian rubes, in any event. Or has someone concluded in their great good wisdom that all Canadians, wherever they reside are residually rurally backward linguists?