Soda-popped
When I grew up in Michigan, we drank pop. Whether it was Pepsi, Coke, or 7-Up, it was pop, as in “Wanna pop?” Soda was a difficult transition for me when I left Michigan 22 years ago. But my little sister, who has recently joined me in L.A., had already begun transitioning from pop to soda some years ago. I wondered, why would a Michigander - still in Michigan - start calling it soda?
I’m a denizen of a political website, and we have our own lingo. I was reading a story online this morning about the rising rate of violent crime in London, titled “Britons Fear Rise of the Yob.” Of course, we all began asking the same question: what’s a yob? British lurkers came out of the woodwork to tell us: it’s a young thug.
“Ah,” we said, “a yute”. This is our term for young thug. It stems from a cynical awareness that newspaper stories written by those with secret sympathies for the perceived underdog have a tendency to characterize marauding vandals as “disadvantaged youth” (now imagine some hairy, smirking thug telling a police officer in a heavy Brooklyn accent, “It ain’t my fawlt officuh, I’ma disadvantaged yute.”).
But such lingo as “yute” is specific to my online community. It’s not geographical. I am wondering if soon geographical linguistic communities will be, if not replaced, at least matched by cyber linguistic communities. I certainly talk more to my online fellow denizens than I do to the neighbors. After all, neighbors move. Online is often more stable. And my little sister is a true MySpace freak. Is that where she picked up soda?
The day may be coming when, rather than hear an accent and ask “Where are you from?” we might hear a word and wonder, “what’s your URL?”.
