National Blog Posting Month

"Soda" vs. "Pop"

Do you call it soda, pop, or something entirely different (Coke? tonic?) in your area of Pennsylvania?

I grew up in Mercer County, where it's definitively "pop."

Now I live in Hershey, where it's "soda" always and everywhere.

Where is the soda/pop line in PA? (And does anybody else remember Hillbilly Joose or Cherikee Red?)

Tags: pa, pennsylvania, pop, soda

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Permalink Reply by Red Pen Mama on November 8, 2007 at 5:53pm: It was pop in Erie, and it's pop in Pittsburgh. I occasionally say soda, although I don't know why. Maybe trying to expand my girls' horizons??
I remember Cherikee Red -- dear, god, that's really how they spelled it, too, isn't it? I didn't drink it -- it was too violently red for me.

ciao,
dpm; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Frances C on November 11, 2007 at 4:44am: Sometimes I can still find Cherikee Red, but it's usually in small-town convenience stores in a line from Latrobe and Bradford. I always buy one when I see 'em!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jen Y on November 10, 2007 at 3:08pm: Oh, you'll totally get laughed out of town in Philly for calling it "pop". (Believe me, I've experienced this -- I grew up in Minnesota, where anyone who says "soda" immediately tips their hand as an effete transplant, though a true Minnesotan would be too polite to ever point this out to someone's face.)

Check out this county-by-county map to see just where Pennsylvania seems to split on the "soda" vs. "pop" thing.

(So, just out of curiosity, how do you pronounce "roof"? Is the "oo" like "tooth", or like "book"?); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Frances C on November 11, 2007 at 4:41am: You're the best -- who KNEW someone had already mapped the soda/pop line?!? Thanks for sharing.

And roof rhymes with tooth in my house. However, I have friends just a bit south of here in Lancaster County for whom roof rhymes with book. And "spooky" rhymes with "bookie" there, too -- which totally throws me.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Margaret DeAngelis on November 12, 2007 at 6:12am: The soda/pop line is somewhere west of Carlisle. I have a friend who grew up in Johnstown, went to school in Lancaster County, and has lived in eastern Pennsylvania for forty years. He still says "pop." You can take the man out of western Pennsylvania, but you can't take western Pennsylvania . . .

Margaret, soda girl always and forever; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Stephen Bojanowski on November 13, 2007 at 10:47am: "Pop" just sounds so hick-ish to our cosmopolitan, East-coast ears here in the Philly area (ha ha); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by jackbusch on March 12, 2008 at 7:48pm: I know this thread has been dead for months but I'd just like to weigh in and say that I call it "Moonsauce." But its because I'm originally from Iowa. They call it Moonsauce there. And they call rice "sticky wheat."; ▶ Reply to This