8 ms·
My favorite is the Californian use of the definite article when identifying numbered roadways, e.g. "I took the 5.". Here in Oregon, a general (and I must say
by pklausler 9y ago
My favorite is the Californian use of the definite article when identifying numbered roadways, e.g. "I took the 5.".
Here in Oregon, a general (and I must say unfair) disapproval of transplanted Californians exists, and that use of the definite article is a "tell" that the natives have learned to look for.
- mcmoose75 9y agoThat's more specifically a Southern Californian thing- people moving from Northern California to SoCal find it strange.
- irrational 9y agoHuh, I'm not a Californian by any means, but now that I think about it I say "the 217", "the 26", etc. Have I been corrupted by Californians that have moved to Oregon?
- davidw 9y agoYes - we do not say that in Oregon. Right: "I drove out 26 to John Day to fill my elk tag". Wrong: "I drove down the 5 to that new Sushi-Yoga place". Here's an article that purports to explain why: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-5-the-101-the-405-why-southern-californians-love-saying-the-before-freeway-numbers https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/the-5-the-101-the-405-why... And yes, it's definitely a Southern California/LA thing.
- diN0bot 9y agoi doesn't ask "why add _the_" far enough: "The freeway through the Cahuenga Pass thus became the Cahuenga Pass Freeway, and Angelenos knew the freeway to San Bernardino as the San Bernardino Freeway." i would have said "the freeway through Cahuenga Pass."
- pklausler 9y ago"26" is pronounced "Sunset", btw. (edit: west of the Willamette, I mean.)
- irrational 9y agoYeah, it's the sunset highway, but I rarely hear anyone call it that (I've lived in Beaverton for 2 decades).
- aidenn0 9y agoHere in SoCal, google maps is amazing at always picking exactly the opposite of name/vs number from what locals use for reading out directions (I didn't know X road even had a number, why are they calling the 192 Y road?).
- cassowary 9y agoIt seems the rule where I am is "always show the number" which means indeed they've very good at picking the opposite.
- ryan-c 9y agoThat seems to be a specifically southern California thing.
- kafkaesque 9y agoThat's unfortunate because I'm pretty sure I and all of my Canadian friends/family use an article with a highway or freeway number.
- Jtsummers 9y agoThis is how I can tell where a scriptwriter is from when watching TV or movies. In the Southeast, no one refers to the interstate or highways like that. But many series and movies set here insist on referring to the I-95 or the US-41.
- aidenn0 9y agoI grew up on the east-coast, but have lived in Santa Barbara for a decade, and I quite embarrassingly said "The 95" instead of "I-95" when visiting home last summer. Also, how far outside of SoCal does the term "Freeway" get used? The only time I remember hearing it as a youth was in the movie Clueless, but is used all the time here in Santa Barbara.
- int_19h 9y agohttps://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_79.html https://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_79...
- aidenn0 9y agoInteresting to see that "interstate" wasn't an option. In several places I've lived pretty much all limited access highways were also interstates, so the term most often used was "interstate"
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nawitus 9y agoHow else would you say it?
- andars 9y agoWithout "the". "I'll take 85"
- dragonwriter 9y agoShorten “Interstate 5” to “I-5” or “5”, but not “the 5”.
- grardb 9y agoI don't understand either. I'm from New York, and I wouldn't say it any other way. "I took 101 to 110," sounds extremely awkward to me. "How do you get there?" "Take 10." "Take 10 what?" I've been seeing this meme a lot more lately. For some reason, it seems to be in fashion to make fun of people from [Southern?] California in this way at the moment.
- CocaKoala 9y agoIf it's a main interstate, then I'll call it "I-[x]". So I drive on I-5 or I-90. If it's a spur, then I just use the number. From Redmond, I would get on 405 to go to Bellevue. When I drive from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto, it is usually fastest to take 101 unless it's rush hour.
- fps 9y agoI'm from southern NY, and where I grew up, you would refer to state highway 110 as "110" or "Route 110". Interstate 495 is "495" or "the L.I.E." Named roads like the Northern State Parkway or the Thruway get the definite article, but numbered roads either get the type of road mentioned, or nothing at all: "I 87" or just "87" This is the same where I now live in New England, as well. "495", "128", "Route 3", "Route 1", "The Mass Pike"
- blaenk 9y agoI'm from/in Southern California and I've never heard it said as "Take 10", but rather as "Take the 10".
- tallanvor 9y agoFor me it really depends on the highway. To take three different highways as examples, I'd say "395", "I90", and "the 405". --"the 395" wouldn't sound right at all, but neither would "405". And that's having grown up in Washington.
- pluma 9y agoAs a non-native speaker, that's how I would say it because that's how it would be said in my native language. If someone told me "I took 5" I'd expect them to be talking about some kind of quantity and wait for them to finish the sentence. Can a non-American native speaker maybe chime in how this works in other dialects? I'm wondering whether it's Californians who are the odd ones out or whether it's just uncommon in the US.
- flachsechs 9y agoit's southern california specifically, because the freeways had names before they had numbers. i.e. the hollywood freeway, the san diego freeway, the pasadena freeway. the habit is spreading as people start leaving socal in larger numbers though.
- nerfhammer 9y agoFrom other parts of the country you might say things like "I took I-5" or "Interstate Five", "Route Five", "Highway Five", "US 5" etc. "I-5" to me sounds a little harsh and hard to say to my ears vs. "I-95" or "I-80" which have a nicer ring to them, so maybe that's how this sort of thing could develop if that's just how the major highways ended up being numbered in different parts of the country.
- Declanomous 9y agoWe don't preface highways with I in Chicago. We either just use the number (I took 290 to 294 to 88), or we use their name. Sometimes we use a combination (I took the Eisenhower out to the Tri-State and then to 88).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hx87 9y agoThat works because Chicago is in the north central part of the country, where highway numbers are firmly in the double digits. In the southwest the numbers are often single digit, so it's awkward and confusing to use without a preprended "I-" or "the".
- microcolonel 9y ago> Californian use of the definite article when identifying numbered roadways, e.g. "I took the 5.". Huh, that's pretty standard here in the greater Toronto area (e.g. the four-o-one, the four-o-seven), in context it also works for TTC route numbers (the five-o-one, the five-eleven).
- TheCycoONE 9y agoOnly for 400 series highways, and the QEW. "Take the four-ten to highway ten then continue north." Or "take eleven south until you reach the four-hundred."
- augustocallejas 9y agoThis is probably vestigial from before the interstate/numbering system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_freeways#Freeway_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_freeways#F... > When Southern California freeways were built in the 1940s and early 1950s, local common usage was primarily the freeway name preceded by the definite article. It took several decades for Southern California locals to start to also commonly refer to the freeways with the numerical designations, but the usage of the definite article persisted. "Take the Ventura Freeway" -> "Take the 134"
- cafard 9y agoA young relative, a transplant to LA, says that it is because Angelenos have a more intimate relationship with their highways. No doubt your explanation is historically correct, but I like his.
- hx87 9y agoUsing single digit numbers by themselves to denote highways is awkward and confusing, but it's much less of a problem with double and triple digit numbers--"I took 95 from Boston to Washington" sounds prettier than "I took 5 from Seattle to Portland". Since the IHS numbering system starts from the southwest and increments up as you go northeast, southwestern Interstate highway numbers are disproportionately single-digit, which is probably why "the" is commonly prepended in SoCal.
- thanksforcoming 9y agoHaving grown up and Oregon and lived in Los Angeles for the past 7 years -- up north it would be "I took I-5 from Seattle to Portland" while in L.A. it would be "I took the 5 from Seattle to Portland." Neither dialect uses just the number on its own. True for more than just single digit numbers too, e.g. I-205 vs. the 405.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoIn the Bay Area, between those two, what I often hear is "I took 101 to San Francisco" or "101 was mobbed so I took 280" or "did you come down 85 or 280 to 101?" no 'i' no 'highway' no definite article.
- int_19h 9y agoHere in WA, it seems that for single- and double-digit numbers, people usually prepend the prefix - so it's also I-5, not just 5; and I-90, not 90. But for multi-digit, it's virtually never there - it's 405 and 520 (without "the"!), not I-405 and WA-520. Now that I think about it, it's probably not so much about the number of digits, as it is about the number of words. So I-90 gets the prefix because "ninety" is a single word, but I-95 somehow sounds strange.
- spc476 9y agoUp in Detroit (I have family there) almost everyone talks about 75 (I-75). Down here in South Florida (where I live), it's always I-95. Just "95" sounds strange to me, as well as "I-75". I guess it's what you grew up listening to.