Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Over the Spring Break I went to New York with a few friends. New York has many different cultures there and many different races of people. As I was walking through Times Sqaure there was a food stand so we decided to stop and get something to eat. We asked for hot dogs and the vendor said "Five franks coming up!" After we purchased our hot dogs one of my friends said, "Frank? Why did he call a hot doig a frank?" This started a big discussion on how people in different parts of the country use different words for different things otherwise known as 'Regional Slang'. Regional Slang is present in the country in different regions such as the South and the East. I looked up statistically in the U.S. that in the South people refer to "soda" as coke. In the North, people say "pop" or "soda pop"and on the East and West people mostly just say "soda". Also in some parts of the country people will refer to a hoagie as a sub or submarine sandwich. These different names have their own specific origins such as with the submarine sanwich. It started in Connecticut during WW2 on a submarine base. These synonyms for words each have their own origins, but I believe that the different names for everyday foods just show how diverse and multi-cultural America really is.