The inflatable structure commonly called a "bouncy house," in which kids jump around at birthday parties, goes by various names. Wikipedia currently lists thirteen. From what I have been able to find on the internet, El Paso, Texas (and surrounding cities and towns) appears to be the only place in the United States that still refers to them as jumping balloons. There were a handful of examples of usage from other areas throughout the country (including Southern California and Iowa), but these uses petered out. The El Paso area stands alone in continued usage.

I was surprised when I learned this. American English often feels so homogenized that slight linguistic differences among English speakers are quite notable. For instance, there are maps which occasionally go around social media that purport to show whether people in a given area say "tennis shoes" or "sneakers."

My surprise abated a bit when I remembered how isolated El Paso-Juárez is. The next major urban area is hundreds of miles away. Something like a jumping balloon is common enough in Southwestern life that everyone learns the word, but not enough to frequently use it around people from other places.

The modern jumping balloon was apparently invented in the 1960s, pre-internet but post-television. A big question that one might have about the internet is how does it change small things like this? Is El Paso still isolated enough to allow for new linguistic diversity? What does it mean to be isolated in the internet era?