I could have told them that.
 

JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- In the South it's called Coke, even when it's Pepsi. Many in Boston say tonic. A precious few even order a fizzy drink.

But the debate between those soft drink synonyms is a linguistic undercard in the nation's carbonated war of words. The real battle: pop vs. soda.

Order a soda in Michigan or Minnesota and you're clearly an outsider. Ask for pop in New York City and you risk being ridiculed.

Bert Vaux, a linguistics professor at Harvard University, says many Americans are overly passionate about how they refer to the popular beverage family.

"For reasons that are unclear to me people feel they have license to attack those who say pop as stupid or illogical," Vaux said. "I use Coke because I grew up in Houston. They're not too fond of that around here. However, it's not as stigmatized as saying pop."

The pop-soda-Coke divide has always created vague, and usually incorrect, assumptions about who says what where, Vaux said. But for the first time, Internet technology -- and 29,000 votes on a Web site -- has offered a definition of the debate's borders.



The site, created eight years ago as a college project, asks visitors to enter their childhood zip code and the soft drink term they use. Their vote is then placed on a map as a colored dot.

What has emerged is a swath of Coke votes across the South, pop votes in the Midwest and Canada, and soda votes in the Northeast and California, and -- curiously -- in St. Louis and Milwaukee.

Who's winning? It's, um, bottle neck and neck. Pop and soda each have about 11,300 votes, or 39 percent. Coke has about 4,800 votes.

Aside from raw numbers from the survey -- whose scientific value is a matter of debate -- the site features posted messages from Web surfers who are passionate about their word for the drink:


Historically, the correct term is 'phosphate,' which was defined by soda jerks. ... Therefore soda is clearly WRONG.


Be aware that soft drink is common in the South, where I am from, and using 'pop' or 'soda' will get you a VERY peculiar look.

New Orleans resident Kristi Trentecosta, a Coke person, is one of those who might look askance at people who say pop, a term she says is "creepy."

"It's kind of dorky. It's kind of like a 'gee wilikers,"' she said. "It's just one of those things that always sounded odd to me. I'm sure there's no good reason for it."

Logic has little to do with a person's position on the pop-soda spectrum, Vaux said.

"A kid hearing pop growing up in Ohio doesn't think, 'Hmm, that isn't sufficiently logical for me. I'm not going to use it," Vaux said. "They just use whatever they hear."


Voters across the South call it Coke, even if the beverage is Pepsi.
When Alan McConchie was a freshman at the California Institute of Technology in 1993, he broke the ice with new classmates by asking, "Soda or pop?"

One Web page and almost 30,000 votes later, the computer programmer is now a part-time linguist.

"Florida splits almost right in half between saying Coke and soda -- just like the Bush-Gore thing," McConchie said. "We're learning that half of Florida is a Southern state and the other half is people who moved in from the North."

Seethu Seetharaman, a marketing professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said McConchie's data isn't reliable because it's not a random sample.

But North Carolina State University linguistics professor Walt Wolfram disagreed, saying the pop-soda-Coke divide is regional and not based on race, age or income.

As for McConchie, he grew up in pop country -- in Washington state -- but later moved to soda regions: California, where he went to school, and New York state, where he makes his home. So what does he call a bubbly beverage now?

"I don't really drink it that much anymore," he said.

Interesting. Everyone I know says pop, but I usually say coke. I guess that's just because I like coke better than pepsi and am always hoping that I can get an actual coke when I'm ordering.

My friends and I have always said coke. Then again, I have always lived in the South.

Yes it is definately coke in the south unless your a yankee transplant. Is there such a thing as Pepsi? I know people that go to a fast food restaurant order there food but not a drink because they don't have pepsi. After they get their food they go to another restaurant that has coke and gets just a coke. Many loyal coke fans in the south.

This is funny -- there's definitely a pop/soda split where I'm from, and I'm in the Midwest.

I think soda is more prevalent in cities whereas pop is more rural.

Kansas covered their butt-SODA POP! LOL !

By my teens, it was pop.
However, after moving to Texas and being the recipient of some "constipated" looks I adopted the term Coke!

Wjhats the site link? I wanna see.

Re: I could have told them that.
 

Story of my life. When I tell people I'm from the South, they ask where--I reply, "North Florida." They say, "Florida's not the South!". Yeah, South of Orlando isn't the South. But the Panhandle? Oh yeah. It takes a lot of time to explain that to people.

Yes it is " I will have a coke please." Here is something I have noticed about places other than in the south. If you order tea in the south it comes sweet with a lemon on the side. However, if you order it elsewhere it comes unsweet with no lemon. How does one drink tea with no lemon and no sugar?

because sweet tea is gross. Lemon takes away sweetness. If you get tea unsweeted, the normal way, you won't need a lemon because it won't be too sweet to handle.

Sweet tea is good... and Arnold Palmers, yum!

There is a new Dr. That started at my clinic a few months ago. She had some sort of accent but I couldn't place it, then one night she asked me if she could have one of my "pops"-I just looked at her and said BTW where are you from-she said Ohio-I said oh ok that explains the term pop. I said sure you can have one of my "cokes" :).

Hootie,

When ate hamburgers I use to love Whataburger-there was one rt. by my house in San Antonio-ummmmmm