In my 8th Grade Religion class, we were talking about witnessing to people who were different and I talked about regional differences in language. I brought up the whole pop/soda/coke thing, and showed them a map I had seen a while back. It shows what word is used by county. I find it to be very fascinating. Even more interestingly, you can click on a particular state and look at the county-by-county breakdown.
I have to admit, I’ve gone native. I’ve converted to saying “soda”.
When in Rome…
Click HERE for the interactive map. The website I found this on has some other interesting pop/soda information. Click HERE to explore it.
Only 7 responses from my home county? (Delta, Colorado) Sheesh.
I really want to know about the ‘other’ category.
“Carbonated beverage”?
Sodapop?
(Maybe they call it by specific given name. “Pepsi.” “Dr. Pepper.”)
BTW: Happy traveling Beth! 🙂
Non-alcoholic thirst quencher?
And I need to move to a blue state…according to the info. page, that’s where all the cool people live.
I think it’s weird that both Kansas and Nebraska had 1354 respondants. Exactly the same number. Weird.
Maybe the pollsters thought they were the same state – Nebraskansas.
I’ve always been fascinated by this too. When I taught HS in the St. Louis area in the early 90s, I often told my students that it would make an interesting project to map the “soda zone” around St. Louis. So when I first saw this map I got to see a graphical representation of something I’d been thinking about for a long time.
I have said soda since living in St. Louis. I’ve always felt that soda sounds less icky to pop and coke ears than vice versa since most characters in tv and movies say soda.
I think the first time I saw this map was here. It’s a great site if you are interested in map type things.
I had previously assumed that everyone was interested in map type things, but have since been informed that not everyone is and would I please stop giving maps to my brother-in-law Paul for Christmas?
My grad school advisor made a big deal about this one (first poster):
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters