Is it coke, pop or soda?

If you're from the South, it's "coke." Plain and simple. After all, Coca-Cola is headquartered in Atlanta. \nTravel to the Midwest, you might hear someone request a "pop."\nJourney cross-country either way, and you'll encounter Westerners or Easterners sipping on what they tend to call "soda." \nBut does "coke" rule over "soda?" Does "frosting" or "icing" take the cake? Do more people say "coffin" or "casket?" \nA online survey being conducted by Harvard University linguists shines some light on those questions of speech. Deemed the "Dialect Survey," the more than 120 questions have gathered information about the diverse pronunciations and dialects of more than 16,000 respondents from across the nation.\nThe survey's Web site also displays maps of the United States to show how people from different regions speak. A colored dot represents each vote for a pronunciation or a dialect. Dots sprinkled across the maps indicate where pronunciations and dialects are used.\nIn this age of mass communication, dialects still continue to change. IU linguistics professor Robert Botne said three notions explain why people use different words for the same objects. \n"First, people who settled in those regions may have come from different places that had different words," Botne said. "Second, language is not static because it changes as people use it. New terms may come into a certain region, but do not in another. Finally, people in one region may borrow a word from another language, while people in a different region maintain the original word." \nAs for the pop/soda/coke question, Harvard's Dialect Survey rules that "soda" is the most popular generic word for a carbonated beverage, with about 50 percent of more than 8,000 votes. Natives of New England and parts of Florida and California apparently use the term the most. "Pop" comes in second with about 25 percent, ruling in the northern Midwest and northwest coast. "Coke" takes third place with about 12 percent, as Southerners mainly say it.\nWhether it's "dinner" or "supper," "bubbler" or "water fountain," "see-rup" or "sih-rup," dialects derive from our ancestors. Pronunciation differences in American English dialect go back to differences in British Isle dialects, said IU linguistics professor Stuart Davis. Immigrants from the British Isles who spoke with varying accents settled in the United States.\nWhether or not the letter "r" is pronounced at the end of a word determines differences in accents, Davis said. Immigrants from southern England who don't pronounce the "r" at the end of some words settled in New England, which explains why East Coast natives tend to say "cah" instead of "car." Scotch-Irish immigrants who pronounced the "r" settled more in the South.\n"There is a clear geographical dialect on the eastern half of the country," Davis said. "You can hear a basic distinction between the north and south, but in California there is a mixture of people."\nBecause of that mixture, dialects seem to differ between northern and southern California. \n"Everyone in northern California says 'hella,'" said sophomore Lindsey Buchanan, of Alamo, Calif. "It's a form of 'really,' like, 'That's hella cool.'" \nBut in southern California, the dialect doesn't include "hella," Buchanan said. \n"In the southern part, you hear more of 'dude' and 'bro,'" she said. \nAccording to Harvard's Dialect Survey, more respondents from California say "firefly" instead of "lightning bug," but the words are interchangeable in other parts of the nation.\nBut there are exceptions to the Dialect Survey. Andrea Cohen, a sophomore from Atlanta, goes against what the survey indicates Southerners typically call their carbonated beverages. She sips "soda" instead of "coke."\nBesides sweetened drinks, other words and phrases with multiple meanings and pronunciations included in the survey are "aunt," miniature lobsters and drinks made of milk and ice cream. East Coast natives, for example, mainly call rubber-soled shoes worn for athletic activities "sneakers," while most people elsewhere refer to them as "tennis shoes," according to the survey. \nWords such as "pecan" and "syrup" demand several pronunciations. The most common pronunciations for "pecan" include "pee-CAN" and "pee-KAHN," which is mostly used in the Midwest. But on the eastern half of the country, from Georgia to Maine, most people say "PEE-can." Cohen displays her southern pride by enunciating the first syllable of pecan in saying "PEE-can."\n"I think that any dialect is fine because there are all kinds of different cultures," said junior Kimberly Harris, of Middletown, Ind. "By coming to IU, I was able to encounter many different accents and dialects, and I respect all of them"