This is a Do-Over of a poll that I posted about two hours ago.

:: sighs :: People say such strange things........

Well, I've always been a bit confused by the term 'soda'. I used to think it was a fizzy drink which went with whisky, but then it also seems to be used in the US as a generic term for a soft, fizzy drink.

Anyway, I don't say 'soda', 'pop', or another combination. I say 'fizzy drink', 'soft drink', or the specific brand name - eg, Coke, Fanta, etc.

I drink mineral water, although lat home I've switched to filtered tap water, because it's a lot cheaper and tastes just as nice.

Yvonne

These days, everything is a diet coke. At least to my daughter

My husband will remind me to buy pop at the store (he's from Ontario). I suspect I grew up saying soda (I'm from Pennsylvania), but I really don't remember anymore At this point, all the terms are pretty interchangeable.

PJ

Pop.

As a proud Minnesotan I correct those misguided souls that say soda. Doin' what I can to improve society.

Mary

What happened to the first version of the poll?

LabRat

Anni

Here in Australia we say soft drink or the brand name. (Diet Coke, Fanta etc.)

Soda is soft drink with ice-cream in it.
And pop isn't a drink at all.

Tricia

I say either soda or soft drink. Never pop. I also use "coke" as a generic, but only for colas, and not for things like 7-up.

- Vicki

In this neck of the woods, we call it 'juice' as a generic term. Sometimes, we'll use the specific as suits: 'can of Coke' or 'can of Pepsi' etc.

Years ago, when I was a kid, it was 'ginger'. We collected ginger bottles and took them to the local shop to exchange them for sweets. But no idea why that term became common and these days it's almost never heard as juice has replaced it.

LabRat

It's a coke. <bg> Doesn't matter what it is--if it's fizzy and sweet, it's a coke. Now the *flavor* is what differs.

Laura (who's an Atlanta native--and you can tell)

Labrat,

How do you differentiate between sodas and "real" juices? Is "a juice" soda and "some juice" fruit juice? Or do you have to say "fruit juice" when you mean juice? And then there are things like Grape Soda and Pineapple Soda, so how do you know?

And, no, I'm not being facetious. I'm really curious.

- Vicki

PS - totally off-topic, but my daughter insists on calling all cold cereals "corn flakes". We used to have fights when she's tell me to buy "corn flakes", and I'd bring back "Corn Flakes". Now, I know when she says "corn flakes" she really means "Honey Bunches of Oats"!

I am from Ohio. Therefore, I say pop -- never knew people called it anything different until I got to college! Pop is ao much easier to say it's a one syllable onomotopia! But after spending a lot of time with my college roommate, who is from Ohio, but is weird -- born in California, father from NYC but she lives with her mom who is from Youngstown, Ohio -- I somehow picked up saying "soda".

OMG when I got home that summer, my family (sister especially) picked on me like nothing else. Then in the fall I work at the concession stand at the high school football stadium -- where we sell pop. Pop is on the sign, we call the kids who are selling it "pop girls" and "pop boys." I really don't think an average Clevelander would buy it if we called it "soda".

As Annie said in the other poll, we can be brutal about people that don't call it pop! I'm not personally brutal about it, but there are many people I know who are passionate about their pop!

- Laura

I used to call it pop. I've migrated to calling it soda since I moved south. My husband kept saying he'd pop me one if I said pop, it should be soda! Since I got tired of hearing the line, I just started saying soda. Or, more often, "do you want something to drink? pepsi or dew?" Naming the individual drinks makes it so much easier.

Good question, Vicki, and not facetious at all. For those kinds of juices we'd name them. A glass of orange juice/pineapple juice...and so on.

For carbonated drinks such as Pepsi, Coke etc it would be 'a can of juice'.

LabRat

Yesterday I replied to the other thread saying (like Yvonne) that here we call it either a fizzy drink or a soft drink. Scotland must be different!

But today I remembered, as a child in Ireland, hearing people talk about 'minerals', as in 'have a mineral'. In and around Dublin, anyway, Coke, Fanta, Club and all brands of carbonated soft drinks are called minerals. We didn't tend to have fizzy drinks in my house, so I remember as a five-year-old being hugely confused and looking for the piece of rock whenever I was somewhere else and was offered a mineral.


Wendy

Oh, I wouldn't claim those for the whole of the country. Actually, I think this is more a Glaswegian/local area thing than national.


LabRat

I grew up in New Orleans and always called whatever brand of soft drink you wanted a Coke. "What kind of Coke do you want?" Then I moved to Texas where everyone calls it a soda, or if you get real hicky, soda water.

Then I moved to Minnesota where it was called pop. I absolutely hated the term and refused to be sucked into calling it 'pop'.

But after eight years of living there, to my dismay, I started calling it pop. Now that I've moved back to Texas I can't get myself to saying sodas - go figure...

Now it looks as though we'll be moving.... somewhere else in the country - but I guess it'll always be pop to me.

Missy

A "pop machine" is a microwave.

I call it soda. But I'm familiar with the term "pop" from kids' jokes. (Why'd the kid put his dad in the freezer? Because he wanted an ice-cold pop.)

At least I don't call it "soh-der." /me shudders

I voted for other, but that is because you didn't put in the option of 'Both, depending on where I am and what the local custom seems to be' I've lived a *lot* of different places, and I find that it varies wherever I go - and since I also find myself trying to copy the local accent, it's not surprising, I think, that I try to copy the local vocabulary, too...

Melisma (diving back under her Rock, having thought long and hard about this, and finally doing her FoLC civic duty )

Like the other residents of the British Isles have pointed out, we tend to say 'fizzy drink' or the brand name.

But some people, I want to say of an older generation, but it could easily also be geographic, might use 'pop' or 'fizzy pop', but only really with reference to children drinking it. You wouldn't, for instance, order a vodka and pop. (well, I personally might, once lemonade becomes two syllables too many... )

On a side note, in my family at least, we tend to use juice as a generic name for any cold, unfizzy drink that's vaguely fruit-based. Which can get confusing when you have orange squash and orange juice in the house.

Helga

Born in NJ and raised in FL, I say "soda". "Pop" is my grandfather...

I'm a Hoosier (term used loosely, refering to living in Indiana... not to be confused with those attending "the school down south" as we call it) and a lot of people around here call it "pop." I dunno... maybe I call it soda because I like doing things a little different. I suppose it doesn't make that much difference, though, since I only drink Cherry Coke from the fountain, and I call it Cherry Coke.

Samik.

I grew up with POP, in Iowa, and know I say SODA, in Missouri.

James

Living in Australia and I also work as a waitress the term 'soda' means 'soda water' generally we say the name of the soft drink we want whether we want coke, pepsi, fanta lemonade or something along the lines of that. As for Evian, while I like spring water Evain is a bit expensive and not something I drink all that often unless I don't want to drink coke if I wanted to drink water I generally go for cold tap water.

I say "can of Coke" (or Pepsi). And Coke (or Pepsi) is pretty much the only pop I drink because I hate 7Up and Sprite and Five Alive and I just prefer Coke over the other ones. I actually prefer Pepsi over Coke but let's not get into that.