PBS did an interesting documentary on American speech patterns across different regions. Texan, of course, got a lot of coverage. I had assumed the Texas drawl was slowly but surely disappearing into homogenous twanglessness under the weight of in influx of non-texans (fereners) and the exodus to metropolitan areas like Houston. I was pretty surprised to find out that the Texan dialect is actually spreading, particularly the use of the flattened vowels and of course, “y’all.” I can never understand why others can’t see the necessity of “y’all.” In my humble but correct opinion is by far the superior second person plural.

UPDATE: Marginal Revolution just happened to post this map of the generic name for softdrinks. It makes me wonder though, when a trademark like “Coke” is widely used in a generic sense to refer to any kind of carbonated sugar-water, does it present a problem for it’s status as a protected trademark?