The Holy Grail of Regional Linguistics

[omorka]

Behold: the Coke vs. Soda vs. Pop Map of the United States.

By county, even.

A few random comments:

There's a color change from "almost everyone says Coke" to "over 50% says Coke" at the Harris/Fort Bend county line. Remind me to ask my kids when we go back to school what they call a soft drink in Fort Bend . . .

quantumduck and bassfingers are in solid "soda"

Comments

[immlass]

I find it very interesting that although I've lived in solid "coke" territory almost all my life, I'm a definite "soda" person. I suspect it's because my mother went to high school for a couple of years in the 50s in Bakersfield, California.

I also have a pointed preference for Dr. Pepper (diet, these days) and almost always have, so I rarely ask for the generic.

[follybard]

Ya know, I grew up in "Coke" country (note that bright red blob in TN where it borders VA), but neither I nor any of my acquaintances used it as a generic term for soft drinks. We used it as a generic term for *cola* drinks. I could order a Coke and be given a Pepsi (or an RC Cola) and be perfectly OK with that; but Sprite, Root Beer, Dr. Pepper, etc. were decidedly *not* "Coke", and I would've given a strange look to anyone who referred to them by that name.

Now I use "soda" as the generic term, but I probably didn't pick that up 'til I went to college in that big yellowish blob in the middle of New York. :)

(And I always used to make fun of my Chicago relatives for saying "pop", so it's weird to be living so close to pop country now....)

[omorka]

In the Deep South, "coke" is the generic for any brown carbonated soft drink that isn't a root beer. Dr. Pepper is a coke, as is RC or Mr. Pibb. But a root beer is not, and neither are the clear soft drinks (or, for that matter, the red ones - a Big Red is not a coke). Tennessee is a border state, so naturally we don't expect y'all to have all the subtleties of the usage. ;) Then again, there are parts of the South where people still call it "dope."

Mom's family is from Denmark and Germany by way of the Midwest, so my maternal grandparents always used "soda" and I understand it just fine, but it's not the natural usage to me. "Pop" is just weird; it sounds like a Dr. Seuss book or something - "Do you want a fizzy pop? Do you want to make it stop?"

Coke Soda

[binaryathena]

yep, in Western South Carolina they called them coke sodas for the generic fizzy soft drink -- but generally Pepsi people didn't want RC or Coke -- and RC people would settle but protest.

but I still ask Do you want a Coke? when I have a variety to offer -- but ask for diet dr pepper by name

Oh, the pain...

[quantumduck]

I've been in each of the major regions of sugar-water nomenclature. Trust me: each camp finds the other completely unfathomable.

I've heard Texans order Sprite after being asked if they wanted a Coke as in:

Waitress: Coke?
Patron: Yes, I'll have a Sprite.

As a boy I used to say 'pop' myself (Michigan, Indiana, Illinois). Some in Chicago even went so far as to talk of soda-pop or sody-pop. Thus I found 'soda' a natural transition term when i moved to Houston. The 'Coke' as generic word thing still amuses me.

[brezhnev]

Most interesting. I wonder what the map would look like if it included Canada too. As for the green spots in North Carolina, I wonder if to them it's "RC Cola", the perfect companion to a Moon Pie.

[omorka]

Well, at least two people say so. But mostly it seems to be "drink," pronounced "drank," as in "Lurleen, geyet me a nahce col' drank aoutta the ahcebox theyah."

They didn't have a map for Canada, but they do have a stats page for it. It looks like it's mostly a pop kind of place.