MADISON, Wis. ÷ "Bubble jerk," "Swigula" and "that fizzy bubbly sugary yummy floofy stuff" are a few of the responses in a recent survey that asked what people call their soft drinks. Whatever you dub your drink, you had better call it pop in Wisconsin to avoid mockery. If you are coming from the East Coast where you call it soda or the South where a Pepsi is a Coke, then you too may face belittlement.

"I call it soda," said Dhaval Mistry, a University of Wisconsin sophomore from Rochester, Minn. "Pop sounds redneck and coke is just wrong."

According to a survey conducted by Alan McConchie, a graduate student of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, Mistry is living in the wrong place for his dialect.

McConchie's Internet survey has reached more than 90,000 people. The survey reveals the Midwest is definitely Īpop' country. East Coasters say Īsoda,' while folks down south call it Īcoke.'

There are pockets of resistance, however. Those from Massachusetts live in a nether world and call it tonic, while in Milwaukee a pop is a soda.

"There are not only lexical divisions ÷ that is, different words in different places ÷ but quite different pronunciations of the same word in different parts of the country," said Rob Kaplan, a professor of linguistics at the University of Southern California. "It doesn't surprise me that there are different isoglosses for soft drinks."