Today I would like to drink to “soccer,” not the game… the word.
Being a Whitecaps FC season ticket holder, I wanted to relive the thrilling extra-time volley by Eric Hassli, by far the best goal I have seen in person, one which literally gave me goosebumps.
Since it was against Toronto FC, I thought it would be nice to taste a Toronto beer while watching the video. As usual though, I got distracted.
I went to YouTube and scrolled down to the comments. I found a rather lively debate about our use of the word “soccer” in Canada instead of the word “football.” Some people (presumably from England) simply cannot get over the fact we use a different word. They have a point. After all, some countries, France for example, use the word “football” despite speaking a completely different language altogether. Why then would an English-speaking country like Canada use a different word?
Welly welly welly well! Without getting into the history of the origin of the word “soccer,” I would like to take this opportunity to compare the use of the words “soccer” and “football” worldwide.
Let us focus first on people who speak English as their native language. Ninety-nine percent of native English speakers live in one of these nine countries:
- The USA (225M)
- England (58M)
- Canada (18M)
- Australia (15M)
- Ireland (4.4M)
- South Africa (3.6M)
- New Zealand (3.5M)
- Phillipines (3.4M)
- Jamaica (2.6M)
- Italian: “Calcio” (translated “kick”)
- Afrikaans (South Africa): “sokker”
- Canadian French: “le soccer”
- Gujarati (India): “sokara”
- Kannada (India): “sakar”
- Gaelic: “sacar”
- Japanese: “sakka”
- Korean: “chuggu”
- Latin: “morbi” (?)
- Polish: “pilka nozna”
- Slovenian: “nogomet”
- Swahili: “soka”
- Tamil (India): “cakkar”
- Telugu (India): “sakar”
- Vietnamese: “bong da”
- Welsh: “pel-droed”
