Speakers of Māori English commonly end questioning sentences with 'eh' (pronounced to rhyme with 'may'), and this practice has crept into Pākehā English. As Māori-language scholar Jeanette King explains to journalist Kim Hill, the likely origin of this is the Māori word 'nē', used at the end of a sentence to indicate a question or the expectation of a response. The image is by Ngāi Tahu artist Peter Robinson.
Transcript
Interviewer: The habit that New Zealanders have of saying 'eh' at the end, like nice day eh, is that from some kind of Māori intonational rhythm?
Well we think so. The trouble is we can't be sure, but yes there is a particle in Māori nē that is used at the end of sentences to form what we call tag questions like the French ne c'est pas and it forms that questioning function. So nē in Māori and we believe that maybe one of the basis's for where we get 'eh', somewhat similar in sound and perhaps as we think it's probably fairly likely that it comes from the Māori language and that's a really quite a strong feature of New Zealand English the way we put 'eh' on the end of lots of our sentences.
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Auckland Art Gallery – Toi o Tāmaki, Chartwell Collection
Reference: C1997/1/15
by Peter Robinson
Sound courtesy of Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o AotearoaPermission of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki must be obtained before any re-use of this image.