One of my favorite shows these days is History Channel's How the States Got Their Shape.  It is full of odd factoids that my magpie mind latches onto, and has an engaging and warm host, Brian Unger.  And let's face it, history is just plain fun. (Okay, okay, your mileage may vary....)

Tonight via the magic of On Demand (one of the few advantages to having Comcast Cable), I was able to watch two episodes that I had not seen before and instantly loved: "Culture Clash" and "Mouthing Off."

The first deals with culture clashes within -- as opposed to between -- states.  Since the show discusses both the clash between multiple generation Floridians, mainly cattle ranchers, and more recent immigrants AND the discord between Northern and Southern California, I was instantly riveted.

The second was even more fun: "Mouthing Off" dealt with dialects and accents. Having lived in a number of places with distinctive accents and having had my own at one point,* I found it both fascinating and amusing.  And unexpectedly moving:  as a demonstration of the variety of accents, the show cut between people with various accents reading the Gettysburg Address.  I found myself choking up.

I am mainly bookmarking here, since I would really like to write longer posts on both these subjects. 

There was, however, a small aftermath: after watching the second show, I asked the Red-Headed Menace, who had not seen it, the question that was asked of a number of people about the name of a specific class of items:

"What do you call a carbonated beverage?"

"What regionalism?"

"What do you mean?"

"Usually I call it soda.  Sometimes I call it soda pop. Except for with Grandma.**"

"What do you call it when talking to your Grandma?"

"Coke."

Yep.  He is an All-American kid, all right.

*I still do, given a sufficiently high enough level of exhaustion or alcohol.
**That would be his Grandma in Georgia.  And the show missed an important generational difference: with older Southerners, especially in Alabama, carbonated beverages are often not "Coke," but "Co-Cola."