I am assuming you're from the southern-ish US, and so am I. I've always thought that while it's true enough, there was more nuance to that trope than is given out. At least in my experience, using "Coke" like that wasn't an all-purpose term, exactly, but more of a social dance where the word does more work than it would elsewhere, but also retains its meaning as a specific product. This would be as opposed to something like Kleenex, where there is still an understanding that there's a brand with that name, but the sense of its being a generic synonym for tissue is much more important and "semantically compact," if you will.

Like, I don't think anyone would offer you a "Coke" if they didn't think that full-sugar Coca-Cola was one of their available options, and if you ask for a "Coke" you may well be planning to pick something else if they offer, but you're usually signifying, as a social grace, that you're willing to accept full-sugar Coca-Cola (and probably Pepsi) as an option if that is all they have or the other choices are not to your liking.

By asking for the regionally dominant product, you're showing that you know what's easy and normal, and that you're a part of the same regional culture and you don't intend to be difficult. I guess I've heard people say "what kind of coke do you/y'all have?" but even that is more just skipping a skip in the same type of interaction.

Or maybe I've just thought to much about this, and I'm trying to square a circle when no one asked.

I agree. After reading the article it seems less surprising than the title reads. Just English words in the order Spanish words typically would be.

Agreed. I tend to think where English has simplified choices compared to the "partner" language, it will hold on more stubbornly. For instance, English used to have a much wider variety of which words had inflectional endings and how many, but relying on word order was a simpler concept to memorize for a learner and more forgiving when used "sloppily", so over time it won out, and few loanwords retained any significant number of inflections from their original languages.

We almost never pluralize adjectives, and very rarely gender them, and while not a difficult concept, doing so involves extra effort and choices. Postpositive adjectives, while rare, are not inherently more complex, so I think they could more easily make (further) inroads. All the governmental, legal, and military terms from Norman French may have some new friends in the decades to come, LOL.