New Yorker article and mystery word

[David Robertson]

Hey, Jeff, you have a question, enit?

I can't resist the bait:  I've heard Sherman Alexie read and talk many
times.  He's one of the most entertaining performers (yes, performer, not
just a writer) you'll ever come across.  In fact I believe he'll be
performing at a benefit show for a group on whose board of directors I
serve, Dawn Watch, later this summer in Spokane.

So about this word "enit".  It's always written with a question mark after
it.  It doesn't always mean "isn't it?"  It's more like the
stereotypically Canadian "eh?" tag.  Alexie has done entire monologues
about this word, and not coincidentally he's sometimes joked that
non-Indian Americans often mistake people from his community for
Canadians.

The word is pronounced more like "ennit", or in our list's preferred
phonetics, "eh'nI7"/"eh'ni?"

Kind of like Grand Rounde CJ "wigna", as in "Lush san ukuk, wigna?"

Best,
Dave






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