Gosh, growing up a military 'brat' (son of a US Marine) I lived all over and interacted with a bunch of other kids that had similar lack of roots. Most of us never stayed anywhere more than a year or two. My parents were both born and raised in Philadelphia yet I knew a generic term for pretty much all flavored, carbonated, beverages as "coke" (small "C"); this was pretty much the common vernacular on the USMC bases I lived on. As in, "would you like a coke?" and "what kind?". I certainly couldn't imagine that coke vs. soda vs. pop would have been something anyone would have wanted to make a big deal out of. "Pop" has always sounded funny to me but it's hardly the kind of thing worth making a deal out of. Trying to establish that there's a right or wrong about this is rather weird.

I actually looked at the map, finally, and tend to think it supports my alcohol/no-alcohol theory. It's soda on the coasts and in Illinois- Wisconsin, all places with significant bar culture. It's coke down south, Mencken's Coca-Cola Belt. And it's pop in the farmland areas in the upper midwest where bars, and certainly cocktails, are less common.

Mike G wrote:I actually looked at the map, finally, and tend to think it supports my alcohol/no-alcohol theory. It's soda on the coasts and in Illinois- Wisconsin, all places with significant bar culture. It's coke down south, Mencken's Coca-Cola Belt. And it's pop in the farmland areas in the upper midwest where bars, and certainly cocktails, are less common.

Mike:

That's a reasonable theory and there perhaps may be something to it but your reading of the map is in an important aspect wrong and the theory needs therefore to account somehow for the fact that Chicago and northern Illinois is 'pop' country. What there is of Illinois (and it's a good chunk) that is 'soda' country looks very much to be part of an island, the centre of which is St Louis.*

Indeed, 'pop' is the norm for the Great Lakes cities -- Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago (Pittsburg joins in here too) -- which in various ways are linguistically related. As I noted above, what is striking to me is that Milwaukee does not group with the Great Lakes Cities in this respect, which I believe we would normally expect it to do. Milwaukee and the surrounding portion of eastern Wisconsin as 'soda' country is for me then a real surprise.

From a dialectological standpoint, without further historical data to lead me to think another way, I take Milwaukee and St Louis to be 'soda' islands in a Northern Midland dialect area that is otherwise fairly consistent in having 'pop'. For me, the question is why Milwaukee and St Louis go with the New Netherland/New England, that is, Northeastern, dialect complex.

Antonius

* See the detailed map here:
http://www.popvssoda.com/countystats/total-county.html

Mike G wrote:And it's pop in the farmland areas in the upper midwest where bars, and certainly cocktails, are less common.

Maybe in Southwestern Michigan bars are less common, but I think this does not hold true for the rest of Michigan, Detroit up I-75 into the U.P. I've seen towns in the thumb that consist of four bars. Or three bars and a post office. And all the bars will have pop to go with your beer.

Wrong? Moi? I think you can walk away with two pretty different interpretations depending on which map you look at. The county map shows the winner in a three-or-more-way race. But since it can only show one color, all it tells you is the strength of the winner-- not anything about whether another second choice was also strong, or the rest of the field was split more evenly between multiple choices. In a winner takes all map, blue-- "pop"-- dominates the midwest except for, as you say, a cluster around St. Louis (let's call it the Cahokia Sodality) and the east coast of Wisconsin. It makes it look like nobody ever says anything else.

But when you look at the first map that shows the different choices overlaid on top of each other, you see that "soda" is still plenty strong in parts of the upper midwest where "pop" wins. I think the maps, looked at together, support the following interpretation:

Places with a bar/cocktail culture say "soda." This includes the east and west coasts (excluding the south, but resuming again around Miami); it also includes midwestern urban centers such as Milwaukee and St. Louis. St. Louis, uniquely for whatever reason, also seems to exert a strong enough influence that it has changed what the farmland around it says for hundreds of miles.

Northern farm areas say "pop." Chicago, however, despite having a bar/cocktail culture, seems to have enough black or midwestern rural white migration or whatever to tip back over to pop.

Now the real mystery for me is why Coffey county, 45 min. northeast of Wichita, is a soda island in a state that, having only passed liquor by the drink in the 80s, is solid pop country.

Maybe in Southwestern Michigan bars are less common, but I think this does not hold true for the rest of Michigan, Detroit up I-75 into the U.P. I've seen towns in the thumb that consist of four bars. Or three bars and a post office. And all the bars will have pop to go with your beer.

Yeah, offhand I'm surprised Michigan and even Ohio don't score more like Wisconsin.

Are the two maps from different sets of data? Info is scanty but they seem to be. Southern Michigan looks very different depending on which one you look at.

Mike G wrote:Wrong? Moi? I think you can walk away with two pretty different interpretations depending on which map you look at. The county map shows the winner in a three-or-more-way race. But since it can only show one color, all it tells you is the strength of the winner-- not anything about whether another second choice was also strong, or the rest of the field was split more evenly between multiple choices. In a winner takes all map, blue-- "pop"-- dominates the midwest except for, as you say, a cluster around St. Louis (let's call it the Cahokia Sodality) and the east coast of Wisconsin. It makes it look like nobody ever says anything else.

Mike:

I've been working regularly with dialect maps for a very long time and realize well that there are mixed results indicated by the various shades of colour on the detailed map. That Chicago and Cook County is mixed is to be expected, given the proximity of the two 'soda' islands: people -- like me from back east, like Gary from Milwaukee, like my several friends from St. Louis, etc, etc. -- move to Chicago from the Northeastern 'soda' zone and also in considerable numbers from the nearby St Louis and Milwaukee 'soda' islands.

I said that I suspect there may be something to your bar-culture theory but I would have to add that that strikes me as possible primarily with regard to the occurrence of 'coke' across the south. I do not believe 'soda' vs. 'pop' can be explained on the basis you suggest since Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Detroit and, yes, Chicago too, are all clearly part of 'pop' country... unless there is evidence that these cities had no bar culture, and I cannot imagine that that is the case.

But when you look at the first map that shows the different choices overlaid on top of each other, you see that "soda" is still plenty strong in parts of the upper midwest where "pop" wins.

Between inmigration (i.e., migration from state to state) and media influence (New York and LA are both in 'soda' country and 'soda' is certainly very strongly represented in media usage), I would be shocked if that weren't the case. I would suggest too that it seems to me like there is a good chance that the Milwaukee and St Louis islands will be joined with a bridge through Chicagoland some time in the future. That's what the map and the stats suggest.

I think the maps, looked at together, support the following interpretation:
Places with a bar/cocktail culture say "soda." This includes the east and west coasts (excluding the south, but resuming again around Miami); it also includes midwestern urban centers such as Milwaukee and St. Louis. St. Louis, uniquely for whatever reason, also seems to exert a strong enough influence that it has changed what the farmland around it says for hundreds of miles.
Northern farm areas say "pop." Chicago, however, despite having a bar/cocktail culture, seems to have enough black or midwestern rural white migration or whatever to tip back over to pop.

Here you take a less likely assumption and suggest possibilities to explain it but the more straightforward assumption is that Chicago is 'pop' country with significant representation of 'soda' usage to be explained through immigration to Chicago from nearby 'soda' areas and the northeast, as suggested above.

In the end, I see no clear or direct support for the bar-culture theory with respect to the distribution of 'pop' and 'soda' across the Midwest and Northeast from the map and data available at the linked site.

Antonius

* Addendum:

Now the real mystery for me is why Coffey county, 45 min. northeast of Wichita, is a soda island in a state that, having only passed liquor by the drink in the 80s, is solid pop country.

That might be interesting but note that the data for that county are comprised of a mere total of '3' respondants, one for 'pop' and two for 'soda'. This could easily be skewed if, for example, one member belonging to a family that atypically for that county (perhaps immigrants from a 'soda' zone) uses 'soda' responded to the poll and then called attention to the poll to another family member who then also responded.
http://www.popvssoda.com/countystats/KS-stats.html

I certainly couldn't imagine that coke vs. soda vs. pop would have been something anyone would have wanted to make a big deal out of.

Not unless you're coming from the East Coast, stop at a diner near Cleveland, order a "cherry soda" with a tuna fish sandwich, and wind up with a floating pint of ice cream topped with a heavy dollop of whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. Admittedly, this was almost a generation ago, but quite a surprise for someone who was trying to lose weight at the time.

That Chicago and Cook County is mixed is to be expected, given the proximity of the two 'soda' islands: people -- like me from back east, like Gary from Milwaukee, like my several friends from St. Louis, etc, etc. -- move to Chicago from the Northeastern 'soda' zone and also in considerable numbers from the nearby St Louis and Milwaukee 'soda' islands.

But you dismiss one, known and historically significant migration, in favor of a much more random and loosely-defined one which, furthermore, dates back a much shorter time. Given two theories-- Chicago is an old soda area into which people who said pop moved in droves during the heyday of Chicago industry and changed the preponderance over 50+ years, or Chicago is a pop area into which a few people moved recently and started saying soda, establishing a significant presence in a decade-- well, the first one may have a little more work to do but it has substantially more time and people to do it with. Is it true? I don't know; I just threw it out as a possibility. But the other seems really sketchy to me.

Incidentally, one reason I keep saying bar/cocktail culture, too, not just bar culture, is that the soda thing is sort of irrelevant if people mostly drank beer rather than mixed drinks or hard liquor. (Or even if they just drank it straight.) Kansas, for one, had a considerable tavern culture, but it was mainly 3.2 beer (when hard liquor by the drink was still outlawed). And God knows nobody was mixing it to make it weaker.

"Soda" and highballs, a certain upscaleness to how people drank, more than just "soda" and drinking or not drinking, seem to match up to a considerable extent on the map-- even as there are obvious anomalies, such as St. Louis, a city associated with if not exactly renowned for a certain beer, being a soda area. Thus Manhattan, a capitol of mixed drinks, is soda country, but Pittsburgh, a capitol (for most of the 20th century) of getting hammered fast after your shift in the steel plants, is not.

Anyway, empirically (I can remember having the soda versus pop discussion at summer camp in the early 70s-- where we also discussed why a girl from Minnesota called a drinking fountain a "bubbler") this distinction goes a long ways back, longer than any of us migrants has been in Chicago, and I'm inclined to look for an answer in the big differences in what liquids we enjoy between parts of the country, more than relatively modest and recent migration patterns.

I certainly couldn't imagine that coke vs. soda vs. pop would have been something anyone would have wanted to make a big deal out of.

You were clearly never relentlessly mocked on the school playground for your use of coke/soda/pop.

I almost exclusively use pop, one of my childhood friends was a soda type. Lots of harassment about it in both directions.

I use pop exclusively for cola and cola-related things. But I also say "orange soda," and Izze is also a soda.

Don't ask me why.

Kman wrote: "Pop" has always sounded funny to me but it's hardly the kind of thing worth making a deal out of. Trying to establish that there's a right or wrong about this is rather weird.

Kman,

I don't see this discussion as one that's trying to determine right vs. wrong so much as why certain regions develop preferences for one term over another. Is it worth making a "deal out of"? Depends upon whether you care or not. Personally, this is a kind of LTH discussion that I find fascinating; it has to do with food, but it spins out centrifugally to address issues of linguistics (most obviously), but also history and sociology. I think discussions like this, though they don’t focus so much on food per se (i.e., how stuff in specific restaurants is served and tastes) are worthwhile…but it’s totally a matter of taste.

Hammond

Those of us from the home of American civilization -- Boston -- know that because soft drinks refresh, the correct term is indeed tonic. All other discussion is secondary.

Mike G wrote:But you dismiss one, known and historically significant migration, in favor of a much more random and loosely-defined one which, furthermore, dates back a much shorter time. Given two theories-- Chicago is an old soda area into which people who said pop moved in droves during the heyday of Chicago industry and changed the preponderance over 50+ years, or Chicago is a pop area into which a few people moved recently and started saying soda, establishing a significant presence in a decade-- well, the first one may have a little more work to do but it has substantially more time and people to do it with. Is it true? I don't know; I just threw it out as a possibility. But the other seems really sketchy to me.

It seems to me you have it backwards. While it is true that there was movement of people from rural areas in the Midwest to Chicago, that doesn't address whether or not Chicago was already 'pop' territory. And note that Chicago and the near subsurbs are still overwhelmingly 'pop' territory (2/3 to 4/5) and the next band of counties look to be all over 80% 'pop' in the poll. The pattern on the map by counties points quite clearly to an expansive character of 'soda' from St Louis to surrounding areas and likewise from Milwaukee. The mixed usage of Chicago can be explained in terms of more recent inmigration from the East Coast AND, probably more importantly, from the nearby islands of 'soda' AND all that with support from the media. Otherwise, you have the weird problem of Chicago having been a city which in the period of the rise of these words not only didn't exercise its influence over neighbouring smaller towns and rural areas but actually was won over by the usage of rural immigrants. Not a typical pattern, unless that immigration was really massive (and let's remember that most of the immigration to Chicago was probably not from surrounding states but from Europe and Mexico). Indeed, the expansiveness of 'soda' from St Louis and Milwaukee appear to be excellent examples of the normal pattern: diffusion from a city to surrounding non-urban areas (likely becoming more expansive with the powerful support of 'standard', i.e. media usage), in a period following the original establishment of the terms throughout the region.

What you term "much more random and loosely-defined" isn't that at all but just something that most non-linguists aren't familiar with. In linguistic matters, Chicago tends to be part of a grouping of Great Lakes urban dialects and the idea you've thrown out doesn't address that issue at all. Your view has to account for why it is that in this feature Chicago breaks ranks with Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Detroit and, for that matter, Toronto too.

Now, is it possible that Chicago was 'soda' territory and secondarily switched to 'pop'? Yes, perhaps. But in the way that one normally interprets dialect maps, that is not at all what one would expect from the map and data AND what we already know about the dialect geography of American English.

Also possible is that everywhere there was a potential to go either way -- soda or pop -- starting from an older term 'soda pop'. I'm not sure that that is actually true and have neither the time nor inclination to do the philological work to assess what the situation was, but it is surely possible to do lots of research and come to a reasonable idea of the historical development of the terms involved. In any event, if this line of reasoning is at all correct, it could be that there has long been a sociolinguistic split between 'pop' and 'soda' within Chicago.

Meanwhile, the bar-cocktail theory remains to my mind rather more loosely-defined', ad-hoc and problematic than a more conservative reading of the dialect map and data in perspective of what we know about American dialects. that's not to say that it isn't worthwhile to look into that sort of cultural aspect of the linguistic development, but I just don't see how the current version of your theory explains the data at hand. Perhaps a more refined version will, then again, perhaps not.

Economy of theory should also be kept in mind. What I suggest -- which is to my mind simply what a straightforward readng of the map and data suggests -- requires that we account for the success of 'soda' in the two islands centred on St Louis and Milwaukee. What you suggest requires that we develop a theory of bar-cocktail culture which somehow puts St Louis and Milwaukee and Chicago (though Chicago has since changed to 'pop') on the one side but Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Detroit etc. on another. As far as beer drinking cities go, I can't imagine more quinessential beer drinking and brewing towns than Milwaukee and St Louis, and I fail to see how they are so immune from the shot-an-beer cultural influences that (in your view) won out in, for example, Pittsburgh. All of that is to my mind awfully speculative.

As a peripheral but related matter, didn't carbonated drinks really take off during prohibition and in a sense separately from a culture of cocktails? Be that as it may, what remains for me of real interest is why St Louis and Milwaukee stand out from the general Northern Midland dialect and especialy why Milwaukee -- also one of the Great Lakes Cities -- goes this other route. Those developments, at least the expansion from those cities into surrounding territory, might seem to be secondary to an older situation where the Midwest was more solidly 'pop' territory but the solidness of the core concentrations in those two islands bespeak a long-standing 'soda' allegiance.

Also noteworthy is that Chicago as 'pop' territory seems to be on its way to becoming a relict area, though that must be viewed in connexion with the non- or supraregional influences with their strong New York/Los Angeles bias. In the time when these terms were first developed and spreading, I cannot imagine that Chicago was not itself an expansive, i.e. influential, centre in its own right. But clearly 'soda' is the expansive term these days, as I'm sure Bob S. laments, since it is clearly also winning out over older Boston 'tonic' and making inroads in places like North Carolina.

Anyway, so it seems to me... Now, who's going to do the sociohistorical and philological research?

Antonius

FWIW, growing up in the Back of the Yards, we called it soda. It was not until I went to High School at the former Quigley South (7740 S Western-now St. Rita's) and started hanging out with more affluent kids from Beverly and Oak Lawn that I heard it called pop.

Mike, I can't seem to find the data that Chicago was once "soda" speakin'. Is that just subjecture on your part?

I'm with Antonious also, that I do not think of the Chicago population, at least since the start of the 20th century as one dominated by an influx of people from Midwestern farms. Most of the immigration came from Europe, then the rural south, finally Asia, and most completely these days, hispanic countries.

Antonious, could the St. Louis/Milwaukee exceptions have to do with their German heritages? For instance, is the native German closer to soda than pop?

This has been an interesting thread. After this is all settled, can you guys settle the "sprinkles" vs. "jimmies" controversy?

Thanks.

Best,
Michael

eatchicago wrote:This has been an interesting thread. After this is all settled, can you guys settle the "sprinkles" vs. "jimmies" controversy?

Dude, sprinkles all the way.

gleam wrote:

eatchicago wrote:This has been an interesting thread. After this is all settled, can you guys settle the "sprinkles" vs. "jimmies" controversy?

Dude, sprinkles all the way.

Yeah. Jimmies seemed to come out of left field around 10 years ago. Before that, I had never heard the term.

stevez wrote:

gleam wrote:

eatchicago wrote:This has been an interesting thread. After this is all settled, can you guys settle the "sprinkles" vs. "jimmies" controversy?

Dude, sprinkles all the way.

Yeah. Jimmies seemed to come out of left field around 10 years ago. Before that, I had never heard the term.

When I was a little kid (which was a tad more than 10 years ago), I was at a Dairy Queen somewhere in Wisconsin with my dad. I asked for sprinkles. They looked at me like I was nuts and said, "You mean jimmies?"

Weirdos.

According to some random blogger:

An article in the Philly Inquirer (free registration required) confirms that at one time "jimmies" was a regsitered trade-mark and gives this explanation for their name:

Back in the 1930s, the Just Born candy company of Bethlehem produced a topping called chocolate grains. The man who ran the machine that made these chocolate grains was named Jimmy Bartholomew

"Thus, his product became known as jimmies," said Ross Born, the chief executive officer. He was told this story by his grandfather and company founder, Sam Born. Just Born registered jimmies as its trademark, and continued producing jimmies until the mid-1960s - which is why the name was so popular here.


But it also notes a 1986 NPR commentary by poet John Ciardi which dates "jimmies" to about 1922, suggesting the term was in popular use well before it was trademarked.

"From the time I was able to run to the local ice cream store clutching my first nickel, which must have been around 1922, no ice cream cone was worth having unless it was liberally sprinkled with jimmies."

While there were large immigrations from Europe and from Mexico, it's hard to see how that affects an English term for something they mostly didn't drink in the first place. The meaningful immigration in terms of sodie pop is surely the huge influx of folks coming to work in Chicago in the mid-20th century from parts of America where they would have already had some term for soder pop. These would have included, of course, blacks from the South, whites from Appalachia, and American Indians, all of whom moved to the city in significant numbers before, during and after WWII, and each of whom still have at least vestiges of communities in Chicago:

The Encyclopedia of Chicago wrote:Although the Great Migration of African Americans to the North is generally more widely known, white southerners also left in droves between World War I and the 1970s. Chicago and other Midwest locales—both urban and rural—provided destinations for most Appalachian migrants, estimated at approximately 3.2 million between 1940 and 1970.

That is, indeed, "immigration [that] was really massive," quite possibly the largest wave of immigration the city ever saw. So the idea that it could have significantly impacted language here is a long ways from being weird, it seems to me. In contrast there may have been some movement from the east coast in recent years, but obviously there's nowhere near 3.2 million people's worth, nor has it had the cultural impact that the white, let alone the black, migration from the South did. Again, IF migration has had any effect at all on the use of the term, that's the migration that's most likely to have had it. Especially since one assumes that people who actually drink something are a lot more likely to influence what it's called than their neighbors who only drink beer.

But note the word "if." If dogmatic positions are hardening up here, mine is not. Drinking habits, especially upscale cocktail-drinking habits, have enough of a correlation with the use of the word "soda" that it seems an interesting possibility to me. (Certainly outright prohibition correlates with "Coke.") But there are enough glaring exceptions to it that I can just as easily see why you might not agree with it. For me, then, rather than dig into a position, I'm curious to see if there's any historical info to support or refute it, or if there's another theory that explains the fairly sharp delineations better. If not drinking patterns, I wonder what?

My guess is it's more cultural than anything else. New York- and LA-produced TV/movies/music are perhaps doing more than actual human migration.

The chicago region might be more susceptible to this simply by being a larger media market, and by being more culturally aware than, and I slander them here, the more rural counties.

That's certainly my guess. When was the last time you heard someone ask for a can of pop on a sitcom?

Mike G wrote:While there were large immigrations from Europe and from Mexico, it's hard to see how that affects an English term for something they mostly didn't drink in the first place. The meaningful immigration in terms of sodie pop is surely the huge influx of folks coming to work in Chicago in the mid-20th century from parts of America where they would have already had some term for soder pop. These would have included, of course, blacks from the South, whites from Appalachia, and American Indians, all of whom moved to the city in significant numbers before, during and after WWII, and each of whom still have at least vestiges of communities in Chicago:

The Encyclopedia of Chicago wrote:Although the Great Migration of African Americans to the North is generally more widely known, white southerners also left in droves between World War I and the 1970s. Chicago and other Midwest locales—both urban and rural—provided destinations for most Appalachian migrants, estimated at approximately 3.2 million between 1940 and 1970.

But that still simply doesn't address at all the question of what Chicago originally was and so your argument is based on an ASSUMPTION that Chicago was originally 'soda' territory. If there's evidence to support your assumption and turn it into something more than that, fine; I would be happy to consider your further arguments that Chicago was 'pop'-ified by Midwestern rural immigrants who managed to overwhelm the formerly sophisticated use of the dominant cocktail drinkers. (See further below for my more speculative take on this.)

And of course, the whole point about foreign immigrants is precisely that they wouldn't change the local term but just learn what was locally and especially popularly used (i.e., if there is a sociolinguistic split, they wouldn't be likely to be learning the linguistic habits of the higher strata of society).

That is, indeed, "immigration [that] was really massive," quite possibly the largest wave of immigration the city ever saw. So the idea that it could have significantly impacted language here is a long ways from being weird, it seems to me. In contrast there may have been some movement from the east coast in recent years, but obviously there's nowhere near 3.2 million people's worth, nor has it had the cultural impact that the white, let alone the black, migration from the South did. Again, IF migration has had any effect at all on the use of the term, that's the migration that's most likely to have had it. Especially since one assumes that people who actually drink something are a lot more likely to influence what it's called than their neighbors who only drink beer.

If you think that black migration from the south was a major factor in the alleged vistory of 'pop' over older 'soda', you have to explain why the areas where that migration came from don't especially use 'pop'. In fact, in Mississippi, of the minor forms, soda is favoured over pop, at least nowadays according to the poll data. The same would seem to apply to white migration from the south (though immigration from Appalachia, esp. northern Appalachia, would be a different case).

But note the word "if." If dogmatic positions are hardening up here, mine is not. Drinking habits, especially upscale cocktail-drinking habits, have enough of a correlation with the use of the word "soda" that it seems an interesting possibility to me. (Certainly outright prohibition correlates with "Coke.") But there are enough glaring exceptions to it that I can just as easily see why you might not agree with it. For me, then, rather than dig into a position, I'm curious to see if there's any historical info to support or refute it, or if there's another theory that explains the fairly sharp delineations better. If not drinking patterns, I wonder what?

You perhaps misread my position or exaggerate it as something to argue against. I restate my simple claim:
The map and data, to a trained dialectologist, suggest that Chicago, like most of the Northern Midland dialect area and all but one of the Great Lakes cities, was old 'pop' territory. These data also suggest that St Louis and Milwaukee have been strongly on the 'soda' side for some time and that the use of 'soda' has been for sometime spreading out across the rural areas under the influence of those cities. The presence of a noteworthy but not all that large occurrence of 'soda' in the Chicago data therefore seems to me to be attributable in the most straightforward way to inmigration from the nearby soda islands, the East Coast and those influences being crucially supported by media influence in which 'soda' is the more 'standard' or favoured form, at least in the centres for the media in this country, LA and NYC. Now, this is somewhat speculative but a switch toward 'soda' in a major city like Chicago, under these circumstances (limited migration from 'soda' territory supported by media/standard usage) is not a far-fetched idea.

Now, the limited claim I make is based on a certain considerable amount of experience in dealing with problems of this sort. But it is simply a reading of a very limited set of data. Real research and the solution to historical problems comes through exhaustive investigation of as many facts as seem to be relevant and the solution one arrives at, one should arrive at honestly, i.e., not skewing the things to fit one's preconceived theory. I don't know what all the sociohistorical and philological data would point to, but I do know how to read a dialect map. And I don't want to make any far-reaching or dormatic claim on the basis of what I know at this point.

And I repeat: is it possible Chicago was 'soda' country and switched: yes, but your bar-cocktail theory so far doesn't convince me that that is the most likely scenario.* But it seems to me far more likely that there was a period of variable usage and/or usage with more or less sharp sociolinguistic (rather than just geographic) splits in distribution ('soda pop' yielding 'pop' in some places universally and in others among some social strata, the same for 'soda'). How the sociolinguistic split tended to be levelled out may have differed in different cities, depending on various local factors. Perhaps the inmigration in Chicago tipped the balance in favour of 'pop' or perhaps there are other facotrs less apparent, while other sets of local factors caused St Louis and Milwaukee to opt for the other form (see, for example, Rob's suggestion above, which is something worth considering). A more nuanced and socially complex development is more likely than a completely simple one. But without the evidence, it's all speculation (though if I were to pursue this topic seriously, that's the direction I would look in).

Anyway, this has been a fun discussion and there's no reason for us to get too excited about it, one way or the other.

Prost! (ein großes Bier für mich, bitte, kein Sodawasser).

Antonius

* Again, as I said above, I think it right that such social or cultural factors be considered but in its present form, your theory creates more problems (with other cities) than it seems to solve.

Note too that a further factor to be considered in the original popularisation of the one term or the other is commercial usage. What companies used which term and where did they become popular?

I think we need to apply Occam's razor to this argument:

Why would people use one word or another? Because they'd heard or seen it used. The likeliest place is advertising. Before the huge growth of national brands, regional brands most likely advertised themselves as "Soda" or "Pop"

That's where the research should proceed: print ads in early newspapers.

eatchicago wrote:This has been an interesting thread. After this is all settled, can you guys settle the "sprinkles" vs. "jimmies" controversy?

Thanks.

Best,
Michael

Sprinkles is an actress.* I've known them only as jimmies since childhood. I know Howard Johnson's called them jimmies, as did northeastern ice cream chains Friendly's and Brigham's.

* And a writer these days, I hear, but wouldn't know where to look and really I'm fine taking some random source's word for it. But, for that matter, what you get when you ask for jimmies depends on the store in which you ask...

Well, as it happens at the Tre Kronor Julbord dinner we sat next to none other than Studs Terkel, of whom I can say, he may be 95 but don't stand between him and a buffet line if you value your life.

I thought about asking him if they called it soda or pop back in the old days, but settled for his namesake, Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell, the classic novel of Chicago in the 20s/30s. Thanks to Amazon's "search within this book" feature, it's painfully simple to do research like this:

Pop, on pages 298-9:

The gang lined up for a drink. Vinc asked for pop. The bartender's thick lips popped open with surprise. Slug gave him the wink, and he nodded. "Well, here's how, boys!" ...

..."This guy's a friend of ours, Vinc. He wouldn't fool you," Benny Taite said. "Well, it's awfully strong pop. Maybe I better have root beer."

Soda, pg. 6:

...his memory of it was like having an awful thirst for a drink of clear cold water or a chocolate soda on a hot day.

Pg. 58:

"Say, let's get a soda," Helen suggested. "I'm broke," Studs said. "I'll treat," she said. They walked down to Levin's drug store at the corner ..."

Pg. 459:

There was a pretty, white girl at the cashier's desk. He walked over to the soda fountain to get a coke.

And numerous others. In Farrell's Chicago, at least, a pop is a non-alcoholic drink, a soda is something a soda jerk makes at a soda fountain and may well have ice cream or at least chocolate syrup, and a coke is something else you can get at a soda fountain. So... they're all in use at the same time (mid-1930s), meaning somewhat different, somewhat overlapping things.

So now I wonder: was it pop if you were more likely to get it bottled, as in a rural area (where the bottle would pop as you opened it) or simply in the case of a bottled soft drink served anywhere, and soda if you were more likely to get it mixed to order at a soda fountain (which meant being in a town at least large enough to support a place with a marble counter and refrigeration units to keep the ice cream cold?)

And what's a notary sojac?

But that still simply doesn't address at all the question of what Chicago originally was and so your argument is based on an ASSUMPTION that Chicago was originally 'soda' territory.

That's what I just said, that I was working through the idea that, IF it had once been soda territory but was now pop territory, how might that have happened? But hold that thought...

If you think that black migration from the south was a major factor in the alleged vistory of 'pop' over older 'soda', you have to explain why the areas where that migration came from don't especially use 'pop'.

Actually, the Encyclopedia and I were referring to white migration, with only a parenthetical reference to black migration. But hold that thought...

And of course, the whole point about foreign immigrants is precisely that they wouldn't change the local term but just learn what was locally and especially popularly used (i.e., if there is a sociolinguistic split, they wouldn't be likely to be learning the linguistic habits of the higher strata of society).

Which would be my point, no? That the flood of industrial workers from rural areas was influencing the city generally? Mind you, it's all moot since we now have Studs Lonigan providing actual historical evidence which is more or less contrary. But you do point out that the mechanism I hypothesized was plausible enough in itself to warrant poking around for actual evidence.

The map and data, to a trained dialectologist, suggest that Chicago, like most of the Northern Midland dialect area and all but one of the Great Lakes cities, was old 'pop' territory.

What historical data can you glean from this map, really? Yes, 80% for something suggests that it probably goes back a ways... but at the same time you're suggesting that a wave of East Coasters in very recent history is responsible for what "soda" usage there is today. If you can have that kind of influence in a short time, how can you be sure that something else has really been so established for so long?

The presence of a noteworthy but not all that large occurrence of 'soda' in the Chicago data therefore seems to me to be attributable in the most straightforward way to inmigration from the nearby soda islands, the East Coast and those influences being crucially supported by media influence in which 'soda' is the more 'standard' or favoured form, at least in the centres for the media in this country, LA and NYC. Now, this is somewhat speculative but a switch toward 'soda' in a major city like Chicago, under these circumstances (limited migration from 'soda' territory supported by media/standard usage) is not a far-fetched idea.

Except that, as we now see from Studs Lonigan, soda and pop are two different things in the Chicago of the 1930s. I see two big problems with your theory which, indeed, make it far-fetched:

1) The semi-non-existence of this alleged wave of East Coast to Chicago immigration. I'm sure some folks did that, now and then, but no evidence that it's a major cultural influence here, certainly compared either to Southern or European immigration which are the obvious and ongoing heritage of our city.

2) People drink alcohol in old movies, not soda or pop. (Now you're in MY area of presumptive expertise.) Yes, the soda jerk turns up as a figure in old movies (Harold Lloyd in Speedy, etc.) but overall it's alcohol or nothing (coffee, I suppose, a distant second, and more of a prop than a plot point). And the soft drink companies weren't even big sponsors of radio, nationally, until after WWII. So the media influence argument doesn't really fly until at least the mid-40s if not considerably later, when teenagers came into their own as a consumer segment. Soft drinks were for kids and Southerners, neither particularly prevalent in media back then.

Real research and the solution to historical problems comes through exhaustive investigation of as many facts as seem to be relevant and the solution one arrives at, one should arrive at honestly, i.e., not skewing the things to fit one's preconceived theory.

Indeed. Have a pop! Or a soda!

Mike G wrote:And numerous others. In Farrell's Chicago, at least, a pop is a non-alcoholic drink, a soda is something a soda jerk makes at a soda fountain and may well have ice cream or at least chocolate syrup, and a coke is something else you can get at a soda fountain. So... they're all in use at the same time (mid-1930s), meaning somewhat different, somewhat overlapping things.

Thanks for looking--hey, I tried to get Mike to ask Studs, but he would not--but those usages are basically the usages today. We have always used soda to refer to a drink with ice cream and syrup but NOT as a bottled beverage.

delk wrote:FWIW, growing up in the Back of the Yards, we called it soda. It was not until I went to High School at the former Quigley South (7740 S Western-now St. Rita's) and started hanging out with more affluent kids from Beverly and Oak Lawn that I heard it called pop.

Another data point: I was born in Back of the Yards, as well, and grew up about two miles west in Archer Heights and I, also, somehow managed to grow up with the word "soda."

gleam wrote:You were clearly never relentlessly mocked on the school playground for your use of coke/soda/pop.

Nope, as noted I grew up on USMC bases; "mocking" was a foreplay we didn't take time for, going straight to the fighting which then allowed more time for the "what the heck were we fighting about? Let's go get a coke" time.