Ontario, same as me.
I wonder if there’s a connection to the slurring of the word soy when used to refer to soy beans. Thinking about it and saying to myself, I don’t say soy <slight pause> beans, it’s more soyabeans, all one word. Ironically, neither my family or extended family never said edamame. I didn’t even know the proper name for soy beans until it was available frozen.
Not only do I say soya, but the bottle of store brand soy sauce in my fridge actually is spelled “Soya Sauce.”
This is also in Ontario, Canada, so it’s definitely a thing.
Soya bean is standard British English, and among the majority of cases (not all) where Canadians used British English terms and spellings rather than American English ones.
The etymology of the English word is from Japanese via Dutch (Soja), but since the ‘yu’ in 醬油 (Shōyu in Japanese, Jiàngyóu in Mandarin and Jangyu in Korean) is the Chinese character for ‘oil’ it’s not really an argument for ‘soya’ since you’d figure ‘sauce’ takes the place of ‘oil’. Anyway it’s just one of those simplifications in American English.
When I talk about it in English, which is rare, it’s soy. But I’m an American. I’ll ask my Canadian colleagues about it.
Excellent point. Looking in our sauce cupboard, I found two bottles of Lee Kum Kee “soy sauce” and one bottle formerly containing No Name brand “soya sauce” (now containing white vinegar). All purchased in Toronto, Canada.
Soy Vey! Everyone knows it’s an ancient Middle Eastern Judaic recipe with Biblical Hebrew origins!
I’ve seen both soy and soya here in Australia, but soy is far more typical.
This goes for both the sauce and the bean.
Just to elaborate, in British English ‘soya’ is standard for everything apart from the sauce (which is spelt and pronounced ‘soy’ by everyone except maybe a few old timers). So, that’s soya beans, soya milk, soya protein but soy sauce.
OB
Yup, that. Am English vegetarian, can confirm, though ‘soy milk’ is also sometimes used.
If you say just ‘soy’ here, absent other context (‘would you like dairy milk or soy?’) that’s pretty unambiguously the sauce, and I have heard it just referred to as that, without the ‘sauce’ bit.
Never heard soya before.
I defer to your expertise, but generally my Hawaiian cookbooks distinguish between “soy sauce” and “shoyu” with the latter being saltier - I’ve also heard that shoyu is “the Hawaiian form of soy sauce, saltier than Kikkoman and similar.”
I’m not sure that’s totally inconsistent with what you wrote, but it’s not exactly the same - you would know better than I do, for sure, so if you disagree with what I wrote, I suspect I’m wrong.
As to “soya” - don’t any of you play word games? “Soya” is a must to have in your vocabulary for games like boggle and scrabble. I have been familiar with the term for as long as I can remember, but I don’t recall when or where I first heard it. My cookbooks are from all over the world and I know some of them use “soya.”
British. I remember calling it soya sauce around forty years ago when I first started using it but it’s been soy sauce for a long while now - not least because that’s what it says on the bottles.
Hm, bug juice is the packet of ‘koolaid’ that submarines use in the non bubbly soft drink machines - bug juice dispensers … a packet of hte lemon flavor is wonderful at removing scale from toilet bowls =)
It is not just subs, that is all US Navy ships. And in greater concentrations, it does have some cleaning properties.
Soy sauce, but I seem to remember reading ‘soya beans’ some time before 1975.
Yeah, this.
May I suggest that going back to the spouse and saying: “Honey, a bunch of people on the internet say you’re wrong” may itself be a sign of mental imbalance ?
:eek: 
I use either phrase, but then my bottle says “Soy Sauce Sauce Soja” , so it may be creeping bilingualism.
Soy. And I’ve never heard it pronounced any other way.