In my college days, I flirted with the idea of majoring in linguistics, and one of my favorite classes was about the history and linguistic structure of English. The professor was a specialist in American dialects, and I remember her telling us about the way you could map the parts of the country where people said "greasy" vs. "greazy" or "skillet" vs. "spider."
Having already discovered the amusing New York state debate over standing in line vs. standing on line, I later found out about other variant usages -- one I found particularly amusing was the mundane "drinking fountain" vs. the whimsical Wisconsin "bubbler."
So I was very pleased to see a map showing what people call carbonated beverages all over the U.S. on the Strange Maps site.
Check it out (you can see a pretty big version by clicking on the map graphic on the Strange Maps site). Not only is there the soda vs. pop dichotomy, there's also the trademark-infringing Southern habit of calling all the drinks Coke, and the anomalous counties here and there who don't use any of the three predominant names, favoring what the researchers refer to as "other."
What could Other be? Selzer? Fizzy juice? Oh, maybe it's just soft drinks.
Minnesota is solidly in the Pop camp, which I had to get used to when I moved here 20-odd years ago. My home county in New York is 80 - 100% for Soda, but just two counties to the west, it abruptly switches to 50 - 80% pop! I never knew that.
My favorite facts:
- The Midwestern Pop counties meet the Southern Coke counties along the Ohio River and the Missouri/Arkansas border, with one major exception -- there's a huge circle of Soda centered on St. Louis.
- New Mexico is about half Coke, but four counties go with Soda and one with Pop -- and three use the mysterious "Other," including one where 80 - 100% of the population uses it (whatever it is).
- Alaska is very split. The middle of the state is 80 - 100% for Pop, and a good bit of the rest of the state is 30 - 80% for Pop. But the far north and a couple of other pockets are in the Soda camp (including, it looks like, Anchorage), while the area just west of the Aleutians is 80 - 100% for Other, and the area immediately adjacent to that (to the north) is 80 - 100% for Coke. Whew. Maybe the researchers got really small (and skewed) samples up there or something. Makes you wonder what Sarah Palin calls it.
3 comments:
In the interest of full disclosure, I was born in Nebraska ("pop") and raised in New York ("soda").
Back in the 90's, when I spent all my time on the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" newsgroup instead of working on my math degree, there was a long discussion among the MST3K fans about this question, with many northerners objecting to the use of "coke." At the time I assumed that this would be used mostly by people near Atlanta, home of Coca-Cola, so I am surprised to see that it is much more widespread than that.
Many people back then suggested "soft drink" as a better generic term, but others objected on the grounds that they wanted to save that phrase for times when you mean to include juice and punch and water.
I am also surprised to NOT see "soda pop" as one of the popular choices. My experience at college was that easterners said "soda," midwesterners said "pop," and in between (Ohio and Indiana) were people who put them together, in what I felt was a lovely transitional way. Of course, my sample was much smaller than the one used for the map.
The Coca-Cola website, by the way, uses the phrase "nonalcoholic sparkling beverage," which is a bit long for general use.
Barbara,
Wow, another MST3K fan! I was watching the show when it was a local Twin Cities show in the late '80s. (We still have some VHS tapes from that era.)
I didn't know that there is a transitional zone where "soda pop" is used that lies between the hard core soda and pop adherents.
"Nonalcoholic sparkling beverage"... I wonder what would happen if I requested one of those at a fast food restaurant. They'd probably report me for sounding like Bill Buckley.
As I said, my sample was small and was (oh my goodness!) almost 30 years ago. Did they all go underground, picking the least offensive of the two? Or did I talk to the only people in the world who ever used "soda pop?"
As for MST3K, I was even a volunteer at the second convention. I toured the headquarters of Best Brains. I have pictures. It was my life. And now it is gone. Push the button, Frank.
Once when we were moving we decided to give up cable in the new place to save money. We had completely emptied the old apartment but left in the tv set so that we could catch one last episode of MST3K. At one point in the episode we turned to each other, laughing so hard that tears were running down our faces, and said, "Can we get cable in the new apartment by next week?"
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