My sister being in town this weekend has highlighted another interesting example of differences in dialect between my current locale and my former:

In NJ, if you go into a restaurant and order “seltzer”, you will get a glass of non-flavored fizzy water. If you try this in Pittsburgh, you will get one of three things:

  1. A blank stare.
  2. A double-take, and then a return trip after a conversation with the bartender to clarify. “Now, did you want tonic, or soda water?”
  3. A funny look, and then the correct beverage.

I know that Pittsburgh is a very different place than NJ, and don’t even get me started about the whole “pop vs soda” debate (Pittsburgh is a very “pop”-centric town), but I wouldn’t think that a word like “seltzer” is so foreign that you couldn’t figure out what it was. Then again, the English language gets so mangled here that I really shouldn’t have any sort of expectations, anyway.