HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy
E x p a n d e d - Page: 45650
Entry: EH
On the planet Earth, there is a country known as "Canada" The word "eh" has become a great symbol of all that is Canadian, equaling the maple leaf, the beaver, and the figurehead Queen of a former empire. However, the exact source of this word was relatively unknown until recently. It all started with a man named John A. Wordsmith. This is the actual story, as told to me by his sister Jane.
One day when John was a young man, he decided to visit his second cousin in Vancouver. So, he strapped on his snowshoes and started out. The trip to the city would take quite a while from his hometown of Sackville, New Brunswick; almost two hours. He was walking for about an hour when he met a very confused looking man in the province of Ontario. The man was standing on the American/Canadian border. Wordsmith, however, was quite a distance away, just on the outskirts of Toronto, and was in quite a hurry. So, he decided to shout to the man instead of walking down the hill to meet him. Unfortunately, there was a raging snowstorm in progress, as was usually the case in the middle of July, so communication was rather difficult. Wordsmith asked the man is he needed any help. After repeating his query several times with increasing volume, he discovered that the tourist was looking for the dogsled rental shop. So Wordsmith, being the nice, polite Canadian that he was, gave the man directions. He said, "Follow highway 42-A for three minutes! Enjoy your stay!" However, because of the raging Canadian snowstorm, all the American could hear was some incoherent syllables, punctuated with the sound "eh". The tourist made a mental note to take some Canadian language courses when he got home. He then said thank you to Wordsmith, and asked his name. The reply he heard was a couple more garbled syllables, with an "eh" stuck in the middle. The American decided to return home until he could decipher the strange Canadian language. Wordsmith continued on his way, and had a lovely visit with his cousin, incidentally.
Now the American just happened to be the executive producer of a popular news magazine in the United States. When he discovered that Canadians actually spoke English, he deduced that the "eh" sounds he heard were actually a form of Canadian slang. He then produced a segment on his show dealing with this, and paid some very good American soap opera actors to play actual Canadians. Soon, the rest of the American media got caught up in the "Canadian Craze", and for the next year and a half, all of the popular American television programs had a token Canadian character who ended every sentence with the word, "eh". Understandably, this caused quite a stir amongst all Canadians, who never realized that they were supposed to be talking with the word "eh" until this point. The vast majority of the country attempted to rectify the situation and started using the word immediately. The Canadian Minister of Fisheries heard of the situation and decided to put an end to this foolishness. Sadly, he was assassinated in the middle of a live broadcast on CBC Television. No one in the county witnessed this tragedy. Stories of a conspiracy emerged, but the Canadian Institute of Assurance, or CIA for short, denied this. And from that point on, the word "eh" became part of the vocabulary of every Canadian.
Researcher: Stephen Gilbert
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/3408/
For more entertaining and educational HHGTG entries, visit http://www.vogon.com/guide/
E x p a n d e d - Page: 45650
Entry: EH
On the planet Earth, there is a country known as "Canada" The word "eh" has become a great symbol of all that is Canadian, equaling the maple leaf, the beaver, and the figurehead Queen of a former empire. However, the exact source of this word was relatively unknown until recently. It all started with a man named John A. Wordsmith. This is the actual story, as told to me by his sister Jane.
One day when John was a young man, he decided to visit his second cousin in Vancouver. So, he strapped on his snowshoes and started out. The trip to the city would take quite a while from his hometown of Sackville, New Brunswick; almost two hours. He was walking for about an hour when he met a very confused looking man in the province of Ontario. The man was standing on the American/Canadian border. Wordsmith, however, was quite a distance away, just on the outskirts of Toronto, and was in quite a hurry. So, he decided to shout to the man instead of walking down the hill to meet him. Unfortunately, there was a raging snowstorm in progress, as was usually the case in the middle of July, so communication was rather difficult. Wordsmith asked the man is he needed any help. After repeating his query several times with increasing volume, he discovered that the tourist was looking for the dogsled rental shop. So Wordsmith, being the nice, polite Canadian that he was, gave the man directions. He said, "Follow highway 42-A for three minutes! Enjoy your stay!" However, because of the raging Canadian snowstorm, all the American could hear was some incoherent syllables, punctuated with the sound "eh". The tourist made a mental note to take some Canadian language courses when he got home. He then said thank you to Wordsmith, and asked his name. The reply he heard was a couple more garbled syllables, with an "eh" stuck in the middle. The American decided to return home until he could decipher the strange Canadian language. Wordsmith continued on his way, and had a lovely visit with his cousin, incidentally.
Now the American just happened to be the executive producer of a popular news magazine in the United States. When he discovered that Canadians actually spoke English, he deduced that the "eh" sounds he heard were actually a form of Canadian slang. He then produced a segment on his show dealing with this, and paid some very good American soap opera actors to play actual Canadians. Soon, the rest of the American media got caught up in the "Canadian Craze", and for the next year and a half, all of the popular American television programs had a token Canadian character who ended every sentence with the word, "eh". Understandably, this caused quite a stir amongst all Canadians, who never realized that they were supposed to be talking with the word "eh" until this point. The vast majority of the country attempted to rectify the situation and started using the word immediately. The Canadian Minister of Fisheries heard of the situation and decided to put an end to this foolishness. Sadly, he was assassinated in the middle of a live broadcast on CBC Television. No one in the county witnessed this tragedy. Stories of a conspiracy emerged, but the Canadian Institute of Assurance, or CIA for short, denied this. And from that point on, the word "eh" became part of the vocabulary of every Canadian.
Researcher: Stephen Gilbert
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/3408/
For more entertaining and educational HHGTG entries, visit http://www.vogon.com/guide/
