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From: Carolyn Ybarra <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Dialects, Language, Regionalism
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:32:46 -0800
References: <mailman.122745.1204057616.18604.apg@rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <mailman.122745.1204057616.18604.apg@rootsweb.com>


> From: philip thorne <>
>

> I have never thought about it until this discussion but where in the
> U.S. do people say soft-drinks? I'm sure it's a term used here.
> Anyway because liquor is something that everyone drinks in the
> Eastern Caribbean (you can get that before clean drinking water)
> anything other than liquor is called a soft-drink because it's the
> opposite of something hard like Jack Iron Rum. So if I am visiting

I'm a day or two behind on the conversation. I had forgotten about the
term "soft drinks," but we used it in Michigan. We say "pop" there
generally, and use "soft drinks" usually in the context of an event for
which drinks are to be purchased in quantity. It is used to
differentiate from hard liquor. So it seems it has the same meaning
you are used to.

Until I was in my late teens, whenever I read a book where the kids
were drinking soda, I thought they were having ice cream sodas. Now
I've been in Calif. more than half my life, and "soda" runs trippingly
off my tongue! I can't say I've heard soft drinks as much in
California - for events we order sodas and waters (bottled water,
sparkling water). (I did live in Atlanta for a year, where everyone
had "co-cola" - I remember a small refrigerator filled with it where I
worked. And it was literally Coke for most people, although you could
go over to the Coke Museum and try drinks from different countries -
most of them tasted awful.)

When I studied linguistics, I always found the regional dialects
interesting. Linguists have published dialect maps, as someone else
mentioned (the Montezuma swamp dialect line someone mentioned was
interesting to me as my ancestors - GGG Grands - are from that area in
Seneca County, NY, within a mile or so of the west side of that swamp).

My favorite was frying pan vs. spider vs. skillet, etc. I had never
heard of spider!

Reading my ancestor's probate inventory from 1813, I remember being
surprised they had "Indian Corn." Although someone told me it used to
have a different meaning than the colorful corn it refers to now. They
also had "milch cows." And even though they were English by descent, I
was surprised they had teapots. For some reason it never occurred to
me that they would have kept drinking tea, even after the Revolution.

Carolyn

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