too many words by laura lemay

soda, pop, coke

Now this is one neato map. Its a breakdown of the regional term for a sweet carbonated beverage across the united states, based on actual survey data submitted to www.popvssoda.com. Click a state for raw data.

What I find especially interesting about this is that although I knew soda vs. pop vs. coke was regional, I didn’t realize how incredibly distinctly regional it was. Some of these dividing lines are really stark, for reasons I cannot begin to imagine. Why is is soda in eastern PA and pop in western with a near perfect dividing line between the two? Ditto California and Oregon? What is with that big blotch of soda in St. Louis? And just what precisely does “other” mean?

Where I come from, its “soda.”

(I got it from Slashfood)