Attention: Half Of Canada Calls Kickball "Soccer Baseball"

Alarming news from the north.

Canadian data blog The 10 and 3 has released a series of dialect maps based on a survey of 9,500 Canadians on the terms and pronunciations they use for 35 different terms, broken down by province and territory. It’s an engrossing post, and you should look at all the maps—it will reinforce the notion that much of Canada is deeply strange.

But nothing is so upsetting as the above map, which indicates that a large part of the country calls kickball “soccer baseball.” That doesn’t even make sense! Soccer is an entirely different sport altogether! This is baseball, but with kicking. “Kick baseball” would be logical. Shortening that to “kickball” is even more logical, and is indeed correct.

Even more upsetting, it’s Western Canada—the weird part of Canada—that gets it right, while normally normal Eastern Canada is being bizarre. (I’m ignoring the Maritimes in this stereotyping, because they’re basically Mars. Honestly, I would have expected them to call kickball something like “having a right foot-jigger.”)

Go look at the rest of the maps. I’m distressed.