Since I’ve moved to IL, Dusty and I have periodically discussed the regional language idiosyncrasies as we’ve observed them both from our home locations (Minnesota/Tennessee) and what we see in central Illinois. Perhaps the most famous debate is Pop versus Soda versus Coke. I ran across an article on Digg this afternoon that has an interactive map that shows the regional usage of the terms. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually seen the site because it is down to traffic load, but I was able to find another blog entry that has a map that shows similar information by county in the U.S.
When I lived in Minnesota, I almost always said ‘pop’, but since I’ve been in Illinois, I switch off between ‘pop’ and ‘soda’ (though I still use pop more). That’s pretty consistent with the region, which seems to be right on the boarder between ‘pop’ and ‘soda’. Looks like ‘pop’ is used most often of the three in the U.S.
I compared the Campbell/Plumb map with an electoral map and assigned “carbonated beverage votes” to states based on congressional representation. It looks like the distribution is pretty homogenous for both states. Came up with these numbers:
215 Soda (40%), 163 Pop (31%), 155 Coke (29%)
Interesting that the soda states pretty much coincided with the blue states on the map I used and the red states were split between coke and pop. However, the McConchie raw stats for the U.S. are:
Soda 38.5%, Pop 37.9%, Coke 17%, Other 6.6%
So, either the two maps are using statistically different raw data, or my the winner take all principle in my electoral estimation is benefiting coke and the expense of pop.
This is exactly why we need to get rid of the electoral system.