When Reality Knocks

Greetings all, Steve here. I had a revelation which might help with international deplomacy and understanding and I present it here as a free public service.

There was a spontaneous World Cup celebration here on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. The Commercial Drive neighbourhood is extremely multi-cultural, with people from all over the world congregating and yelling at each other in two dozen different languages. Normally, there isn’t a great deal of understanding between these cultures, because of the language differences, but after the World Cup 10,000 people poured into the street to yell at each other and I learned that there are two fundamental similarities between people from all different cultures: 1) People from different cultures from around the world like to get totally slaughtered drunk and 2) the Universal Sound is: “Eh!”.

Canadians, of course, have long been accused of saying “Eh” when they talk, but most other cultures do this as well, though with subtle differences. Canadians say it in an understated, calm sort of way, almost like a question: “Eh?” Italians, who were out in force for the World cup celebrations, of course, say it loudly and with great enthusiasm: “EEEEEH!” For example, the gentleman seen in this picture with my girlfriend, said “EEEEEH!” several times, first to indicate his happiness at his team’s win, then to indicate that he wished to have his picture taken with Meghan, then to communicate his pleasure at having appeared in our picture and then once again to indicate that he wanted a drink. I assume. It’s quite possible that he said “EEEEEH!” a number of other times, but we lost track of him after that, so I can’t be sure.

In fact, there were quite a few cars full of frantic Italians driving around Commercial Drive most of the afternoon, waving flags and communicating their relief, their national pride and ecstatic excitement by screaming: “EEEEEEH!” In fact, although the Italian language is rumoured to have a large number of words, Italians all over the Drive were communicating almost solely by using the: “EEEEEEH!” This may have something to do with the other universal similarity of getting desperately hammered.

In any event, other cultures also use “Eh.” I saw one disappointed French fan, draped in the Blue, White and Red walking up the Drive, but his “Eh” was less enthusiastic, more of an “Eeeungh.”

Learning about other cultures is always enlightening.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Lifestyle and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.