NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/alt/usage/english/8370

Text File | 1992-11-10 | 1.9 KB | 42 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Evan Kirshenbaum)
Subject: Re: Various things
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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 19:05:16 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>At least some places, "pop" and "soda" are different, like
>down at the drugstore/sodastand in the small-town midwest.
>Pop is premade, like Code, etc.  But you can get a cherry
>or chocolate soda, which is a wonderful and different thing.

In Chicago, a "soda" is an ice cream drink with flavored syrup and
carbonation.  (Coke, etc. are "pop".)  My dad found out that this
wasn't universal when he stopped in a drugstore in (I believe)
Pennsylvania and asked for a "chocolate soda".  He wasn't pleased with
what they gave him :-).  (There, you have to ask for an "ice cream
soda".)

On as similar topic, "pop" for me was always a mass noun:  we would
ask for "pop" or "some pop" or "a glass/bottle of pop".  My sophomore
roommate was from Cleveland, and he used "pop" as a count noun.  He
would offer me "a pop".  (To the extent that it was meaningful in my
dialect, this would have meant one of those hard candies on a stick.
The disc-shaped ones were "suckers", but the spherical ones could be
"pops".)

Evan Kirshenbaum
    HP Laboratories
    3500 Deer Creek Road, Building 26U
    Palo Alto, CA  94304

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