Hacker News Reader

Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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 ;-)

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com