Canadians believe they own eh and oot and aboot and have an obsessive-compulsive desire to say "sorry."
Sorry, that's not quite true.
There are four uses of eh in English speech, just one of which linguistics scholars agree is Canadian. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary says the others are common throughout English-speaking Commonwealth countries and less so in the United States.
"Nice day, eh?" is not Canadian. This is a question inviting assent.
"Eh? I can't hear you" is not Canadian. This eh comes from the Middle English ey.
"Eh? Stockwell Day really did that Sea-Doo thing?" is not Canadian. This is either a genuine query or expression of surprise.
What is Canadian is, "So I was going down the highway, eh? and I saw this moose standing at the side of the road." The technical term for this is narrative marker. Every language has one, says University of Toronto linguist Gordon Easson.
The German marker, for example, is ja. The French marker could be non or n'est-ce pas. An English marker is probably wot. The American marker seems to be huh.
A marker is a kind of phonetic punctuation designed to maintain the engagement of the listener with the speaker. Why eh is the Canadian marker no one knows.
Canadians pronounce out and about so that they sound to others -- mainly Americans -- like oot and aboot.
We do this, says Terry Pratt, general consulting editor of the Gage Canadian Dictionary and author of the Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English,likely as a form of 19th-century rebellion against both the Americans and English but primarily because we have not completed the Great Middle Ages vowel shift.
The first wave of English-speaking immigrants to Canada arriving in the late 18th century were, of course, people who abandoned the American Colonies during and after the revolutionary war with Britain.
They came from the coastal New England states, mainly Connecticut and Massachusetts, and settled in the Maritime provinces. They came from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Vermont and moved inland to settle on the St. Lawrence and around the Great Lakes. They sounded like Americans. Standard Canadian English is a direct descendent of English spoken in the middle Atlantic states.
The second wave of English-speaking immigrants arrived after the War of 1812. They came from Britain -- significantly Scotland -- and Ireland. The Scots (our first two prime ministers were Scots) and the Irish used oot. The American Canadians and English did not.
Accounts of the time make clear that American-sounding English was denigrated in Canada. To a lesser degree, so was English-sounding English. This is as good an explanation as any as to why we oot our words. But this Canadian sound is not for all ou words. We say loud not as lude but as lowd. We say house as hoose but houses as howses.
This is where the Great Middle Ages vowel shift comes in, the move toward getting our vowels to go by faster. Say house, and the vowel sound has to be plucked from way up near the top of the mouth (our ou sound is called "the Canadian raising"). Say houses, and one almost can breathe the vowel sound, it slides out so effortlessly.
As for "sorry": Canadians say they employ an absurdly ubiquitous use of "sorry." Sorry, your car hit mine. Sorry, you stepped on my foot.
Well, sorry, there is no linguistic evidence that Canadians are peculiarly apologetic, says Prof. Easson. "It's just stereotyping of the self-effacing Canadian."