We really don't care what you call this thing. Enjoy your free water and move along, Buddy.

IT’S POP, NOT SODA
According to the amazing dialect maps recently created by North Carolina State University grad student Joshua Katz (see link below), most of us in the Chippewa Valley call the fizzy stuff that rots your teeth “pop,” as do the majority of Upper Midwesterners. Over on the eastern side of the state, meanwhile, “soda” is king.

TAKE A SIP
What do you call that bubbly thing you drink water from in public places? According to the data Katz used, we’re close to a tie in the Eau Claire area: About 49 percent of us call it a “water fountain,” while around 44 percent say “drinking fountain.”  The remainder call it a “bubbler,” a regionalism predominant only in eastern Wisconsin and Rhode Island.

TRASH TO TREASURE
In the Chippewa Valley, we (or at least 63 percent of us) call the place where you buy someone else’s unwanted stuff a garage sale. The second most popular term is “yard sale,” followed by “rummage sale.” Katz’s maps don’t include the term “thrift sale,” although that does seem relatively common around here, too.

WON’T YOU COME WITH?
Although it sounds like fingers on a chalkboard to grammar snobs, nearly two-thirds of Chippewa Vallians would utter “Are you coming with?” as a full sentence. (Meaning, of course, “Are you coming with us?”) Save for a spot in Pennsylvania, this turn of phrase seems confined to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and adjacent areas.

ITTY BITTY LOBSTERS
Around these parts, 64 percent of us refer to the creepy freshwater crustaceans with the dictionary-approved moniker “crayfish.” Twenty-two percent use “crawfish,” a term most prevalent in the Deep South (where we hear they eat them). A few holdouts call them “crawdads,” making us wonder where the crawmoms are.

Based on Joshua Katz's dialect maps. To see all 122 maps, visit
http://tinyurl.com/dialectmaps