調羹 vs.湯匙

The other day Drew and I went to 7-Eleven and I asked for a spoon in Chinese and I said 調羹-tiáo​gēng but the cashier didn't understand me and neither did Drew. Drew then told the cashier 湯匙-tāng​chí and he understood and gave us spoons. I figured it was because of my tones but Drew never heard of 調羹 and I never really heard of 湯匙. I went home later that night and found in Google translate that both words can be used for spoon. I thought there would be a difference but I couldn't find any.

Later today I went to my uncle's to eat dinner and I asked my cousin about it and she didn't realized the difference. She usually says 湯匙 and she thinks that it's more of the younger generation to use this word. We asked my aunt what she says and she said 調羹. She said that people that immigrated to Taiwan in the past use 調羹 which makes sense since my mom and dad always uses that word. My cousin also said that people back then would say chopsticks and spoon (筷子, 調羹) but when the westerners came, they would say fork 叉子 , spoon 湯匙, and knife 刀子. It's interesting because in one of the English-Chinese translation engines, 調羹 cannot be found unless you directly type the Chinese words. Then later tonight I was talking to my roommate about it and we were trying to figure out the difference but couldn't. It's interesting though because my cousin was laughing about it because she never thought about it before. I'm sure it just comes naturally to her like if we say "t-shirt" in the U.S. and some just say "shirt." There are a lot of different variations of a word but it's interesting that it happens more than you think.

-Chihchat