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Comment by angmarsbane | Hacker News Reader

Native Californian, and Angelino here. It took me a minute to realize all the headlines about I-10 meant THE 10 freeway.

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This is my favorite Californiaism, especially whenever I drive "the 101".

In Pennsylvania one drives "30" or "22", never with "the" and seldom even prefixing "route" or "US".

Texas just says "35".

It's interesting that it depends on whether you are in Southern or Northern California[0]. No one says "the 280" or "the 92" or "the 85." But I have heard "the 101" frequently in Norcal.

[0]: https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/the-5-the-101-the-405...

You hear it in northern cal only from foreigners :-) who have moved here from southern california.

Socal retained the names for freeways much longer than the usage in the north (the bayshore freeway was assigned 101, while, say, 280 or 17 never had names AFAIK). pilingual (does this mean they speak English, Spanish, French, and Southern Californian?) linked to an article that describes this phenomenon in the south.

What’s especially funny is that you adopt the “correct” terminology depending on where the freeway is located. I’m from Northern California and lived in Southern California for a while. When I’d drive to my parents for Christmas, I’d take “the five”. When I’d drive back home after new years, I’d take “highway five”.

It is "The 101" in SoCal - anything else would be odd. Similarly, it is "101" in NorCal - anything else would be odd.

Native Californians code switch based on location.

Some Socal history:

How Los Angeles got in the habit of putting ‘the’ in front of every freeway name

https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/6/16264074/socal-los-angeles-th...

A select few roads get the ‘the’ treatment. Apparently this is a historical thing when the freeways were named after their destinations. The Santa Monica freeway etc…

Northern California doesn’t use the “the” for example.

Chicago has named freeways (which they call expressways). The Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Dan Ryan, the Stevenson, several others.

I don't think it is unique to CA, I've never heard it any other way in other parts of the southwest.

Makes sense to me, I hear the definite article prefix far more often in SoCal than NorCal/SF Bay.

Back in IL nobody did this, at least not when I lived there over a decade ago.

Illinois is weird in this regard. In Chicago most of the big freeways have names as well as highway numbers that are used with articles in spoken language far more often, even on the TV news. So it’s “The Kennedy, the Ryan, the Edens, the Ike” instead of say “I-94” or “94”.

A notable exception is Lake Shore Drive (US Highway 41) which everyone just calls “Lakeshore” in conversation with no article.

That's true about the named highways near Chicago.

I grew up out in the west suburbs, everyone just said "88" "53" "59" "355" "i80" etc.

I've lived here (Chicagoland) since 1965 and most often called LSD as well as "Outer Drive".

Everyone I talk to calls it LSD.

I’ve lived here nearly 50 years, and even had a Lake Shore Drive address for a few years. LSD isn’t very common at all in my experience. Cabbies in particular all say “Lakeshore” or “Should I take Lakeshore?”. Same with traffic reports on WBBM etc. Everyone who lived in my building said “<numbers> Lakeshore” when asked where they lived.

The economy of two syllables instead of three wins I guess.

Sacramento has I-80 and business 80. Good luck.

"The Business"...? ;)

And in St. Louis they call I-64 “fardy”.

They call it Highway forty after Us 40, which was its pre interstate name. Personally never heard it called fardy, other than in jest but we do like to have local ways to pronounce things. Exhibit a: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_French

I know it’s after US-40 but I like that it’s a local shibboleth like “Missouree” (St. Louis) vs “Missouruh” (rest of Missouri) and BreadCo vs Panera. We used to say the geographic dividers between those two pairs were identical.

I had one professor who was an unironic “fardy” speaker. I think it’s not common under 50 anymore. But I also haven’t been in town for a long time.

It's a lot catchier to say I-5 or I-95 than it is I-10...

However dropping the classification from a number is equally problematic be it the timezone (E.G. EST / New York) or a freeway.

Absent even any other context, MOST Americans would probably at least consider a highway / freeway / other major vehicle route in their head hearing I-(number).

“The X” in New York would most likely be a train, though no highway numbers in New York go quite as low as the trains.

Also, you can’t authoritatively say “the X” because of the multistate nature of the metropolitan area, where talking about “Route 17” may refer to either NY 17 or NJ 17.

Seemingly, not all Americans (assumption) remember that I-# is shorthand for Interstate (route number) within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" though I can never remember the full title without looking it up either.

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