The particle eh

This feature is strictly speaking a syntactic one, but it amply illustrates the interrelationship of different influences on Channel Island English also becoming apparent on the phonological level. Eh is a high-frequency particle in the Channel Islands (cf. Ramisch 1989: 103–113). Its normal phonological realization is a diphthong  , but it can also be pronounced as a short . Three different modes of usage can be distinguished.

(1) eh is used as a request to repeat an utterance that the listener has not heard properly (rising tone on eh):

Interviewer: What sort of trouble did you have there?

Informant:    Eh?

(2) eh is employed as a tag that is added to a statement to induce the listener to express his/her opinion on what is said by the speaker (rising tone on eh): You grow your own stuff, eh - eh?

(3) eh is used as a phatic element which serves to establish or to maintain the contact between speaker and listener. It can occur repeatedly at relatively short intervals within one speech cycle, without giving the listener a real opportunity to voice his/her opinion. The aim of the speaker is merely to secure the listener’s attention. The length of articulation of eh is often reduced, and the rising intonation which is typical of (1) and (2) is frequently omitted:

In the old days, you see, when we were children, there was no television eh, we had no electric [sic] anyway eh – yes a gramophone eh, that’s all what we had you see, music eh, there was no wireless eh.

Eh has indeed the status of a stereotype in the Channel Islands. People refer to it when they are asked about typical features of their local variety of English. It is certainly true that eh generally occurs in present-day English as an invariant tag question that invites the listener’s response to a preceding statement. But the question remains why eh occurs with such a high frequency in the Channel Islands. An influence from Norman French immediately suggests itself, because eh is equally common in the local French dialects and is employed in the same way as in English. Moreover, there is a tendency among older speakers to use a short  for eh both in Norman French and in English.