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Comment by kaon_ | Hacker News Reader

This. In German the word for "video-calling" is "Skyping". Similar to MSN, the strength of the brand and goodwill that it has in some geographies is on-par with Google for search, or Coca Cola for coke. The fact that the software got consistently worse, year on year on year is hard to grasp for me. Microsoft made the right call to cannibalize and use teams. But how was Skype such a pain? Not being able to share screenshots in chat killed it for me.

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Coke is a trademark owned by Coca-Cola - the generic word is cola. Their brand is so strong that even though you were thinking about the topic of branding they still got you!

"Yes, in many parts of Europe, people commonly use the word "coke" as a generic term for soda, similar to how it is used in the American South, essentially referring to any type of cola beverage rather than just the Coca-Cola brand; this is because Coca-Cola is so widely recognized across the continent." --Google's ai thing

Interesting, where I lived (NZ), "coke" was the typical term for Coca-Cola (not generic soda, but you may be asked if Pepsi is OK), however in NL where I live now it's pretty universally "cola", and I think that's also not generic. Can't speak to other European countries though, I've never noticed.

In the U.S., it tends to be a regional thing. Coke, soda, pop are all in common use as the general term for soft drinks.

I'd use "cola" in Dutch to refer to the generic type of drink, which is pretty much universal in Dutch AFAIK. But I would use "coke" in English. I'm not sure where I picked that up: I've lived in a combination of England/Ireland/NZ over many years, and to be honest I'm not actually sure how it's used there. Maybe just from US films?

Although what I really wanted was a Pepsi, but she wouldn't give it to me. All I wanted was a Pepsi! AND SHE WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME!

I don't know for other European countries, but at least I can say that it is not true in France. "Coke" is reserved for cocaine, and cola is the generic word for Coca-Cola-like beverages.

I don't drink enough to say for certain, but I'll say that I've heard "coca" a lot, but I never hear "cola."

In France coca is a bit generic term for coca cola and pepsi But if you have a brand that sell coke we use cola Like breizh cola or a <supermarket brand> cola

I've heard that the French are strict about language, but what does "reserved" mean here? What do the French call coke¹?

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_(fuel) ?

I'd suspect the vast majority of France never has to worry about that type of coke, or maybe even knows it exists.

One upon a time wikipedia used to have links to the other language wikis on the same entry. Now I have to edit the URL to jump to the disambiguation page https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke which tells me it is also "coke" https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_(charbon)

It still does.

There's a button saying "58 languages" on the trailing edge of where the title of the page is. It opens a drop-down with language selection.

(Presumably the UI is different on mobile, speaking about web.)

Coca cola, coca light, coca zero.

"Charbon". The French commoner will refer to the rock coke as "charbon de terre", shortened to charbon. Similar to "pomme" is apple, and "pomme de terre" is apple from the earth (potato). Charbon is also the word for charcoal.

So my grandma used charbon (coke) when she was a kid. And my mom uses charbon (charcoal) for her barbecue.

In journals and scientific papers the words coke will be used.

In everyday speech, coke means cocaine. Coca is short form for coca cola. And cola is the generic for a coca cola flavored soda.

In everyday speech, coke means cocaine. Coca is short form for coca cola. And cola is the generic for a coca cola flavored soda.

I admittedly used a very rare/specialist example homonym. What I'm really wondering is how context plays into it. If you're ordering drinks in France and an English speaker says they'll have a Coke, does anyone really think they are referring to cocaine? Coke is vernacular slang for cocaine in American English too, but no one confuses this with usage of the brand name to refer to soft drinks (specifically Coca-Cola, or to soft drinks in general, which is a regional thing).

"Un coke s'il vous plaît" is not a proper French sentence. It does not sound right. It will be obvious it's a language difference and people will easily guess coca cola. In fact French people will most likely quip back "Un coca vous voulez dire ?".

Fun aside, coca cola/cola is male. Cocaïne is female. A rail (of coke) is male.

> I've heard that the French are strict about language, but what does "reserved" mean here? What do the French call coke¹?

That's also called "coke", which is why there's a Tintin book called "Coke en Stock". [0]

That said, if you say "coke" in English, almost nobody will think of fuel, and the same is true for French speakers today.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Aventures-Tintin-Stock-French-Sharks/...

If you say the word coke (\kok\) in front of a Frenchman, they will immediately think of cocaine. Most people aren't aware of the other meaning of coke. They will probably say it's coal (charbon), the technical term being coke (but pronounced \kɔk\) or apparently charbon de terre according to the other comments.

In the US south if you ask for a coke they will ask which kind - Pepsi, sprite, or a Coke coke? Etc

In Germany, MS was very successful though to get organizations on Teams during the pandemic. Zoom is not a thing.

Sure, it's nice to brand the verb, but when the product behind it is EOL, why bother.

That's because teams was offered for fee with m365 which most companies used anyway.

Having said that, Zoom is an absolutely terrible product. The backdoor they installed in Macs for example and then when it was brought to light refused to remove it until Apple was forced to blacklist the application. They're either incompetent or evil.

Looking at the Linux version with their hard coded list of supported distros when trying to share your screen...

I'd say both.

Zoom is a thing in Germany.

In the US, I would say roughly everyone uses Zoom outside of companies using Teams or Meet, generally because they're bundled with the office suites they use.

Jitsi and BBB were pretty popular across universities at the time, back when the German government were pivoting hard into Element/Matrix:

https://element.io/matrix-in-germany

Zoom was popular with at home schoolkids. Because to use Teams you had to have a Microsoft acccount first. Zoom was a link, a meeting ID, and password. Sometimes just a link.

I've actually never had to put a password in to any zoom call. It was always just the link. Only when calling from a phone did i have to put even the meeting ID in

You can optionally add the password as a query parameter to the zoom link itself. The links you got probably had that.

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