Wednesday, March 21, 2007

pop?

are you a "pop" or a "soda" person? or maybe you generically call all sugary carbonated beverages "coke"?

if youre an english-speaking north american, then the term you use is most likely determined by where you grew up.

i'm definitely a pop person... and i've gotten quite a lot of slack for it since i moved away from "pop" central: the midwest! (i may have picked up the southern "y'all" but i'm not giving up the "pop"!!!)


the map comes from a website that attempts to investigate "the great "pop" vs. "soda" mystery simply by people answering a few questions online... so go do it! the blue shows the "pop" regions, the gold/yellow calls the sugary beverages "soda" and the red shows where people use the undescriptive term "coke."

the strong regional dependence of the name really struck me when i was 14. i went to visit my aunt who was living in south korea... this required many long plane trips. i flew from cincinnati (note the spelling), ohio to chicago, illinois then got on another big plane to soeul, south korea. the truth came to me on that long plane ride from chicago. the korean flight attendent came around asking if i wanted anything to drink. i asked "what sort of pop do you have?" and without hesitation he asked, "are you from cincinnati?"

i was shocked!! how could he possibly have known i was from cincinnati just from that simple question? it must be the "pop!"

that was only the first lesson i learned about the fascinating differences that exist between people living in different places... as it was the beginning of my first international trip! and i'm sure that flight attendent was familiar with the various flights that connected thru chicago that day... but i was still mystified by his amazing deductive reasoning!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Simon from Downunder here. We've always called it 'fizzy drink', which I think is much more descriptive (and possibly onomatopoeic if said fast enough) :)