Hello,
The short answer to your question is that the word "soccer" is used
all over the English-speaking world as a synonym -- actually, a
nickname -- for "association football." Even the English use the word
occasionally. Its use is more common in countries that have a rival
form of football, according to Garry Archer in a frequently reproduced
Usenet posting. In Australia, "football" usually refers to Australian
Rules Football or to rugby. In Ireland, "football" may mean Gaelic
football. In the U.S. and Canada, the word refers to the countries'
own variety of "football" (1).
Yahoo! uses "soccer" on its sports sites in the U.S., Canada,
Australia & New Zealand and Singapore; "football" is used in India and
the UK & Ireland (2).
What about other English-speaking countries? Some searching backs up
Archer's statement that the use of the word "soccer" increases with
the prevelance of rival forms of "football" in a given country.
South Africa: A Google search of the .za domain found 86,200 sites for
the search term "soccer" and only 15,800 sites for "football." Of the
"football" sites, most disappeared from the search results when sites
with the word "rugby" were excluded. Clearly, "soccer" is more than
acceptable there.
Other Africa: All of the African national soccer federations use the
word "football," or the equivalent in their language, in their names
(3). A search of newspapers generated mixed results. This Day of
Nigeria (www.thisdayonline.com) uses "football." The East Africa
Standard of Kenya (www.eaststandard.net) uses "soccer." The Monitor of
Uganda (www.monitor.co.ug) uses "football." The Daily News of Zimbabwe
(www.dailynews.co.zw) says "soccer."
New Zealand: Search results were similar to South Africa's.
Pakistan: A Google search for (Pakistan football -rugby) turned up
144,000 sites, including many Pakistani ones. A search for (Pakistan
soccer) retrieved 106,000 results, most of which were for American
sites but which also included a reference to soccer in the Pakistani
newspaper Dawn. It appears that, as in England, "soccer" is uncommon
but not unheard of.
Ireland: There are 42,400 "soccer" sites and 61,200 "football" sites.
However, almost half of the "football" sites dropped off when the
words "rugby" and "Gaelic" were excluded. The Irish Times
(www.ireland.com) calls it "soccer," as does television network RTE
(www.rte.ie).
Caribbean: The search (Caribbean soccer) turned up 105,000 sites, but
the ones that popped up were mostly American ones. (Caribbean football
-rugby -nfl) got 137,000 results, including the official sites of the
Caribbean, Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica and Bahamas football
federations. "Football" is clearly the favored term.
I hope this answer meets your needs. If not, please request
clarification.
References
(1) Garry Archer, "Why Soccer?"
http://rec-sport-soccer.org/terms/why.html
(2) "Yahoo! Sports Worldwide Coverage"
http://sports.yahoo.com/top/worldwide.html
(3) "Federations CAF," Soccer Library
http://mitglied.lycos.de/soccerlibrary/federations/caf.html
Search strategy:
countries word soccer
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=countries+word+soccer
CAF federations
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=CAF+federations
And the many searches described above. |
