Growing up in the town of Amherst, NY—a suburb of Buffalo, which for those who don't know is in the western part of the state—means I said "pop." But then I went to Arizona for college and was surrounded by people who said "soda" and for some reason I quickly changed. I'm not sure why. I had promised that I wouldn't "change" despite going to a new part of the country, yet I didn't even resist this. I don't know why. I didn't adopt "freeway" (until moving to California) but "soda" just happened so easily.
Today, thanks to the magic of Twitter and the world's best Tweeter, Roger Ebert, I learned that someone is collecting data and plotting a map showing where "pop," "soda," "Coke" and other are most prevalent based on the region a person learned language. I answered "soda" because right now that's what I say and that's what the question asks (it's a very simple survey). But based on what the person is measuring should I have answered "pop"?
1 comment:
When I was in a linguistics class in at Stony Brook U (back in the early 1970s) my classmate and I did this very thing. We mapped soda/pop couch/sofa and eight other things. We showed people pictures of the objects so we didn't prejudice the results.
Got an A on the project.
Linda U.
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