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Comment by pklausler | Hacker News Reader

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.

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That's more specifically a Southern Californian thing- people moving from Northern California to SoCal find it strange.

Hella strange.

Indeed - and the reverse is also true:) I'm a SoCal native (now in San Jose) and it drives me crazy when I'm listening to traffic reports and they refer to "the Bayshore freeway" and the "Nimitz freeway." Aargh.

This is probably vestigial from before the interstate/numbering system:

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"

A 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.

Using 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.

Having 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.

In 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.

Here 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.

Up 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.

In the Midwest, it's common to refer to short interstate numbers by the letter "I", as in "Drive I-96 until you get to Detroit" (pronounced as 'eye-ninety-six'). Which kind of solves that problem.

Except in LA, you are often times referring to roads that aren't part of the Interstate system. So, to drive where I use to live close to Beverly Hills to the small town of 'Montrose' (might just be a neighborhood actually) I would take the (I)10 to the (I)5 to the (State Route) 2, or if I had a stop in say, Glendale I'd take the (I)10 to the (I)5 to the (State Route) 134, make my stop get back on the (State Route) 134 to the (State Route) 2. You also had roads like the State Route 110 which turns into Interstate 110 at some point, etc.

To the driver these are just freeways. Now LA did have many more major freeways which were state routes and not Interstates (with the occasional US Highway, such as the 101) than most places do. Where I grew up in the mid-west, we really only had Interstates and regular roads and did say I80 and never, "the 80"

As 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.

From 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.

We 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).

That 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".

I think it's triple digits that become a mouthful with the "I-" prefix. Double digits sounds best with the "I-", I think.

Triple digits come from being a spur of a two-digit highway incidentally, not to do with region. I-385 is a spur of I-85, etc.

To ultra-pedant it up, generally only odd prefix digits indicate a spur (only connects to the prefixed highway in one spot), where even numbers indicate a bypass or beltway (which intersect the main highway multiple times).

No. In Seattle and Portland it's definitely "I-5." Not hard to say at all.

it'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.

Nobody says "I took 5" when referring to they way they came. They say "I took the 5".

Source: from socal.

Where I'm from we just say I took $highway, with highway being say 35w, 494, 13 etc....

Given the context the definite article seems unneeded to my ears.

> As a non-native speaker, that's how I would say it because that's how it would be said in my native language.

As a native English speaker I would say the same thing. "Take the I95" and "Take highway I95" both make sense to me. Maybe the Americans posting on this thread are talking about the second usage?

As a native speaker, I typically drop 'the' in favor of "Take 95 North" or "Take I95 North". Adding 'the' just sounds awkward to me, but it might just be a syllable/flow thing. If I was in an area with single-digit highways, I'd likely say "take I5" although I can see myself saying "take the 5"; just because "take 5" sounds Wrong and potentially misleading. -shrugs-

This is how I hear it said around South Florida though. It's also possible my mind just edits out 'the' when people talk about it

> just because "take 5" sounds Wrong

Take that back! Just because you're not used to quintuple time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Five

SCNR ;-)

Linguistically, I believe that the Californian usage (e.g., "the 5") is an elliptical construction -- i.e., it's a truncated form of "the 5 freeway".

Well, what's "Take 5"? I mean, five is being used as an ordinal not a cardinal. Normally, to give an ordinal sense to a normal number you need to follow some noun. So "Chapter 3", "Level 8", "Freeway 5". And then we're not specifying what kind of thing it is, so "Take 5".

Btw. It's nice if you omit the word "linguistically". It's good to remember that just because you speak a language, that's not the same as being an expert on language science. Any more than because you inhabit a body, you're an expert on physics.

> 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.

I think you're thrown off because 5 is such a low number. Most highways have higher numbers, so it looks more natural without the "the".

Using Dallas highways as an example, "I took 635 to Preston". Or maybe chain some highways "I took 121 to 75, then to 635, and I got off at Royal".

The only highway in Dallas we use "the" for is the Dallas North Tollway, which most people just call "the Tollway" (NTTA is currently trying to push an acronym, "DNT", but nobody uses it). And I've seen a few people refer to President George Bush Turnpike as "the Bush", which is uncommon enough that I do a double take whenever I hear it (it's usually just "Bush" or "George Bush"... and maybe "190" from people who remember when it was under construction before they decided to turn it into a toll road).

Hi. We're I'm from, we mostly say the plus the name of the road. So "take the Monash". But the Monash is officially "Monash Fwy". It's also called the M1. Country roads often have long names like "Main Neerim Road" or "Warragul Korumburra Rd". When I've had to give a direction involving them, I say "just before you enter town, turn left towards Warragul" because there will be a giant sign in Korumburra pointing towards Warragul; if you're in the middle of the road, you have a sign pointing to Korumburra and another pointing to Warragul.

Such roads often have numbers. But I've never committed them to memory or used them in ordinary conversation. Based on the precedent of the "M1", I guess I'd expect "the C520" or whatever. But that recommendation is probably not worth the paper it's printed on.

> 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).

Only 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."

That's unfortunate because I'm pretty sure I and all of my Canadian friends/family use an article with a highway or freeway number.

That seems to be a specifically southern California thing.

For 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.

This 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.

I 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.

https://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_79...

Interesting 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"

Huh, 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?

Yes - 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...

And yes, it's definitely a Southern California/LA thing.

i 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."

"26" is pronounced "Sunset", btw. (edit: west of the Willamette, I mean.)

Yeah, it's the sunset highway, but I rarely hear anyone call it that (I've lived in Beaverton for 2 decades).

Here 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?).

It seems the rule where I am is "always show the number" which means indeed they've very good at picking the opposite.

How else would you say it?

Without "the".

"I'll take 85"

Shorten “Interstate 5” to “I-5” or “5”, but not “the 5”.

I 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.

If 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.

I'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"

I'm from/in Southern California and I've never heard it said as "Take 10", but rather as "Take the 10".

"Interstate 5" or "I-5".

As a Michigander, I'd say "Take US131" or "Get on I96 eastbound to M44", just in the same way I'd say "Take a right on Main Street". The United States Highway/Interstate/Michigan abbreviations are pretty common, but optional.

And come to think of it, that's exactly how Waze and Google Maps and Apple Maps turn-by-turn directions read to me. Do these programs use different dialects in Southern California?

I would use the definite article with a route on a transit system, though, for example to identify a bus line or (when in a city that has one) a subway: "I'll ride the 28 home" or "I commute on the 10".

Carolinian here. I say I85 (interstate) or 76 for state roads, but never "the 76".

From where I grew up:

"If you're going to LAX from Ventura, Take Route 101 to I-405." Alternativeley "US 101" could be used.

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