Americans tell us Canadians say, “eh,” more often than we realize. This linguistic tic seems to be part of our DNA.
According to linguists interviewed for the Atlas Obscura article, Why Do Canadians Say ‘Eh’?, we can partly blame our habit of saying, “eh,” on our ancestors and, in large part, because we just want to be nice.
Our Scots-Irish immigrants
It is possible “eh” originally came from some population of Scots-Irish immigrants, a major early group in Canada. Elaine Gold, the founder of the Canadian Language Museum and a recently retired lecturer at the University of Toronto, said, “eh” is still used in Scotland and in Northern England, but it’s used in a much more limited way, primarily to indicate that the listener hasn’t heard the speaker. It means “what?” or “pardon?”
We want to be polite
Jack Chambers, a linguist at the University of Toronto, wrote in a 2014 paper that “eh” has one pragmatic purpose: it shows politeness. Atlas Obscura reports, “Using ‘eh’ to end the statement of an opinion or an explanation is a way for the speaker to express solidarity with the listener. ... (T)he speaker is basically saying, hey, we’re on the same page here, we agree on this.”
Source: Genealogy a la carte