New Yorker article and mystery word

[Mike Cleven]

At 02:40 PM 6/21/99 -0700, Jeffrey Kopp wrote:

>This is kind of a weird story; it includes a homosexual encounter
>with a hitchhiking Lummi prizefighter (this is the New Yorker, after
>all).   But what prompts me to write is to ask about the word which
>punctuates his conversations with other natives, apparently the
>Eastern Washington native version of "Eh?", as in:
>
>"'Geez,' the fighter said.  'Close one, enit?'"


Occurs int the BC Interior, too; I think it's just "Old West-ern English"
as adapted through native/cowboy dialect.  I've heard it in Lillooet and
Williams Lake.  Another similar curiosity is the response "ooizit?" for "is
that so", or "did you really" and several other meanings, which is widely
found in rural (especially native) south central BC.