coke a cola

[Victor Steinbok]

A Dutch friend who has been doing an internship in Cameroon posted (FB)
a YouTube recording of a Coca-Cola ad. The video originated from a South
African site. I found the title odd enough to share.

> >Coke a cola brrr Advert ~www.imod.co.za~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJb1o8SJQnc

A brief search revealed *dozens* of hits on YouTube--unlike raw Google,
these are real. There are 274 total hits, most from comments, but at
least four from titles.

Sure enough, one collectibles e-store included the following in its promo:

> >So whether you call your beverage Coca Cola, coke cola, cocacola,
*coke a cola*, coka cola, or just plain soda pop or soft drinks - this
is the Coca-Cola Store for you with fast worldwide shipping!

Google gets 53K+ raw hits.

Here's another interesting one--related to the past "pop" discussion:

> >What brand of *coke* is better Coke-a-cola, Pepsi or other brands?
http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=40464

I thought Coke-a-Cola was a regionalism (where the "region" seems to
include a large swath of Africa--both English- and French-speaking) but
it seems to be more widespread than I expected. It popped up in a link
to a San Francisco craigslist post (although the post itself is long
gone--it was a photo of a Coke can sculpture). Another showed up on the
WPIX (NYC) Help Me Howard blog. This one is particularly odd because,
after repeating "Coke-a-Cola" several times, "Howard" added a clip
supposedly from some marketing creep at "Coca Cola North America".

http://weblogs.wpix.com/news/helpmehoward/2009/05/cokeacola_contest.html

I don't know who Howard is, but he's in New York, not in Africa (and I
don't think he is *from* Africa, but I don't know for sure).

Searching the ADS-L archives, I found one item, posted by Gerald Cohen
in 2005, reproducing an email from someone in Tanzania. But the point of
that message was not to bring in "coke-a-cola",  but that the very term
has become ubiquitous for "something [] "easy," or
"a-given...no-problem...of-course"."

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0502C&L=ADS-L&P=R6068

So not only is the term used in this particular way, but it's also
used--regionally, at least--to represent something that's associated
with Coca-Cola commercials.

[There was also a false positive in pre-1999 archives.]

    VS-)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org