Pop or Soda

[ZandraJoi]

Going off of the Coke vs Pepsi thread. What do you call them- Pop or Soda?

I’m in Michigan, USA & we call it pop. When I visited a penpal in Tennessee years ago, she had asked me if I wanted a Coke. But she offered Pepsi lol It was funny how they referred to “Coke” as generic.

[Kyng]

Yeah, there are loads of terms for them. Here in the UK, the generic term is "fizzy drink" 😛 !

[Uncrowned Guard]

We always used Soda as the term for it up here and it seems to massively outweigh the alternative "pop" term. 

On 12/3/2022 at 10:37 AM, ZandraJoi said:

I’m in Michigan, USA & we call it pop. When I visited a penpal in Tennessee years ago, she had asked me if I wanted a Coke. But she offered Pepsi lol It was funny how they referred to “Coke” as generic.

However, many people (including myself at times) will refer to Coke as more of flavor than a brand.  So getting a Pepsi, Coke, RC, etc. is all good for "I'll like a coke" most of the time.

[Jason]

I worked up in Minnesota once and the accent and words are so different than Tennessee (where I'm from).   In fact, I also noticed they called soda "pop".   Anyway, the other difference, obviously, is they simply sound very different than southern people, but I'm all for accents.   It makes a place unique.

[Grungie]

We call it a coke down here.

Iirc, it’s because Coke is from Georgia, so it made its way across the South first. So by the time the other stuff got around here, Coke was already synonymous.

It’s like calling tissues Kleenex for us.

[Heatman]

It's called coke here as well but they can generally be called soft drinks. It's few people that calls it soda. If you go to store and ask for soda, the seller would be like what's soda? It's either you call it coke or Pepsi or soft drinks. If you say soft drinks, they will still ask you which one, so you have to be specific.