Eh

Eh ( /ˈeɪ/ or /ˈɛ/) is a spoken interjection in English that is similar in meaning to "Excuse me," "Please repeat that" or "huh?" It is also commonly used as a question tag, i.e., method for inciting a reply, as in "It's nice here, eh?" In North America, it is most commonly associated with Canada and Canadian English. Similar interjections exist in other languages, such as Armenian, Hokkien Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Persian, Portuguese, Turkish and Catalan.

The spelling of this sound in English is quite different from the common usage of these letters. The vowel is sounded in one of the continental manners, and the letter h is used to indicate that it is long, as though the origin of the spelling were German.

It is an invariant question tag, unlike the "is it?" and "have you?" tags that have, with the insertion of not, different construction in positive and negative questions.

There is some question about the origin of the term. One theory is that the "eh" sound is similar to the "ey" sound that a native French speaker will stereotypically say when pronouncing the word "Hey". Dropped H's are also common to many British dialects.