I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I don’t think there’s an internet conspiracy against me, as most southerners I’ve encountered on the board have agreed with me in the many threads we done on this topic.
Again, that must be a Texas thing. It isn’t a Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia or Carolinas saying.
Well, there are several states that aren’t in your excluded group, but still traditionally are considered in the south.
Plus, you say “most” southerners agree with you. Doesn’t the fact that there’s a group that doesn’t agree with you kind of say that it happens, but it’s outside of your experience?
I mean, I’ve never seen an instance of violent racism in the south, but I have no doubt that it exists there.
Oh, never seen that one. The way it’s always been presented to me is similar to Becky2844’s exchange. Something like “You got any coke?” “Sure, what kind?” “Sprite, please.” (And I’ve heard it presented more in terms of Texas, not the South in general, although I’ve heard enough Southerners claim that it’s not unusual in their dialect. Once again, I personally don’t spend all that much time in the south, so I can’t comment on it from personal experience, but it seems doubtful to me independent people are all incorrectly reporting their personal experience or pranking me.)
I think it happens in parts of Texas, and other isolated pockets of the South. I also think there are some communications issues at play here, but it’s been done to death at this point. All I know is that in any of the 5 states where I have lived, asking for a coke in a restaurant will get you a Coke with no other questions asked, unless they only carry Pepsi.
Soda, always and only. I have no idea why those cute little regional variation articles pretty much all insist that folks from MA use the term tonic instead, though, because I don’t know anyone under 70 that calls it anything but soda exclusively, and I lived in MA for 1/3 of my life.
I regularly use the term “sody pop.”
I grew up in a small town between Syracuse and Rochester, right in middle of the pop-soda battle zone. Some people said “soda,” some “pop,” and some “soda pop.” To make matters worse, my New England born mother called it “tonic” and my chemist-trained father said “carbonated beverage.” I spent my childhood in fear of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. I assiduously avoided using any general term for any such concoction and referred instead only to specific types, such as cola, root beer, ginger ale, etc. Now that I live in New England I can finally breathe free, relax, and call the stuff “soda” without fear.
1000 times this. Pop is only one ingredient in a soda.
Calling a Pepsi or Coke a soda makes as much sense as giving someone a cup of crushed nuts and calling it a banana split.
Pommie! I have never heard anyone in England say “soda” (except for the unflavoured stuff when you put it in booze - and even that, when by itself, is “soda water”). I only learned to say “soda” for flavoured carbonated drinks after I moved to the USA. I think that, if the British have a general term at all, it is “fizz”. More often though, the specific flavour will be named: “cola”, “fizzy orange”, “fizzy lemon”, “Tizer”, “Irn Bru”, etc.
I didn’t vote, as I really speak British English in Britain and pretty fluent American English in America, but in my dialect of American English (learned in Southern California, from a native) “soda” is the only general term.
I’m in NC, and I use either ‘soda’, ‘soft drink’, or a specific brand name. ‘Pop’ sounds wrong and horrible.
I’m with Labrador on the ‘coke’ thing. People keep saying that it’s the common generic term in the South, but in my experience it’s only used that way by old people (my grandparents’ generation) or people with an extremely exaggerated ‘country’ dialect. If you ask for a Coke around here, you’re gonna get a Coke. We take soda too seriously to be vague about what we’re ordering.
They’re all soft drink to me.
I grew up calling it “pop.” Then, during the 25 years I lived in New York, I called it “soda.” After relocating back to NE Ohio, I’ve gone back to calling it “pop.”
I remember once, while in NY, I was chatting with my mother back in Ohio. I casually mentioned to her that my boss installed a soda machine at work. She imagined that it gave out ice cream, whipped cream, various syrups, nuts, cherries, etc. For some reason I didn’t correct her illusion.
Changing between “soda” and “pop” is not as difficult as the “Mary/marry/merry” thing.
Sorry, Lab, but Kentucky-bred husband and his whole clan is solidly in the “want a coke?” “Sure - got any root beer?” camp.
Pop. Exclusively pop.
Soda for cola, ginger ale, root beer, lemon-lime, grape, orange etc
Club soda or seltzer for un-(or minimally) flavored carbonated water.
Tonic for Quinine-flavored carbonated water.
pretty sure, in central Illinois where I grew up, ‘soda pop’ was generally the term, in other words, a carbonated beverage with any sort of flavoring.
I use soda. My Massachusetts bred grandmother was one of those tonic people. As others have said, I think that’s a dying out generational thing. I suspect the coke as a generic will follow it in the next 40 years or so.
I also think the correlation between soda/coke and large population is interesting. It looks like high density says soda and that influences the areas around the density centers.
This is mostly how I feel, although I think there’s a hierarchy of how formal vs. slangy the terms are: “pop” is more slangy than “soda” which is more slangy than “soft drink”. E.g., if I saw a grocery store commercial that said “Assorted Pop, 2 for $1.99”, that would seem oddly informal to me.
I think it’s more like some people would refer to pop as “soda pop” because pop is one of the major ingredients of sodas. Much the same way some people call pens “ink pens”. Then somewhere along the line some groups dropped the “pop”.
I’ve seen this mentioned before in this thread. What does that mean. What is “pop”? Carbonated water?
