dira | Two more things

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Two more things

One, a sheepish observation I meant to include yesterday: since writing a story in which Ray Person removes his gloves by biting the fingertips, I have become 100% more likely to remove my gloves by biting the fingertips. /o\

Two, a question for Californians: if a person did not happen to know the local name of the highway she was on, because of reasons, but did know that it was (California) State Road 3, what would she call it? Not the 3, presumably. California 3? State Road 3? 3? This situation would never arise because non-numerical names are printed on all the highway signs?

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It'd mostly depend on whether they were in northern or southern California. In northern California, you'd say you were "On 3," but in southern California you'd say you were "On the 3."

So, for example, one may "drive on the 405," but one would "take 580 east."

Non-numerical highway names are relatively unusual, except in the case of historical roads, e.g. the Pasadena Freeway (which is what everyone calls 110) or Redwood Highway (part of the 101...which I should not call "the 101" through Sonoma, but I spent most of my childhood in southern California and it runs the length of the West Coast!) or places like that.

I am not even making this up. This is totally one of the regional linguistic differences between northern and southern California.

There are also state standards around what numbers are used and in what order -- this looks to me like a good reference.

I am fascinated by this, because I have lived in several parts of Canada but we put 'the' in front of highway names and numbers almost across the board. I only say 'almost' as a hedge because I'm not sitting here trying to think of counter-examples. Maybe if we say 'Highway XYZ' instead of 'the XYZ'. Oh, dialect areas.

/linguist

When I moved out to western missouri, I got really confused by people calling roads '40 highway' instead of 'highway 40.' I'm still trying to adjust back, now that I've moved away!

Oh, I would think it would make a fascinating linguistic study. Northern Californians don't use the article, Southern Californians do, Oregonians mostly don't, but they seem to be more prone to put "Highway" in as a prefix. I have no idea what they do in Washington (or Nevada or Arizona, for that matter!) But as far as I can tell there's a line somewhere around Gilroy or a little bit south of there, where suddenly highway numbers pick up an article.

No kidding. I hope there's a dialect study somewhere that incorporates it. I've never seen one that does, but it's also not my area of expertise.

I actually work with a linguist, but this is SO not her area of interest. I can just imagine her face if I explained that I'd come up with this great new topic for a research paper (I, er, have a bit of a tendency to come up with weird fascinating projects that eat her life. *cough* It's a personal failing.)

You have to find someone who does regional dialect work, or recent historical linguistics, or lexicography or something, and infect them with it. :D (In Canada there's a subfield called 'Canadian English' where people do this stuff; idk what the American equivalent is, or if there is one. Canadian English and French are both weird ducks anyway.)

We don't use the article in Washington. Or give highways names. We refer to Interstate 5 as I-5, and to U.S. Highway 2 as U.S. 2.

Or give highways names.

Oh, I dunno. I always refer to I-5 as "that fucking bastard freeway." Maybe that's just me? (When I lived back on the Seattle side of the Sound, I'd do virtually anything to avoid I-5. I know every mile of Aurora/99 from downtown all the way out to Shoreline.)

Not a WA native, though, and my linguistic choices are influenced both by my childhood in SoCal and my teen/adult years in Colorado. (The former has me actually calling I-5 "the 5," while the latter makes it hard for me to remember that people here say "freeway" instead of "highway" most of the time.

Edited (note to self: proofreading. it's a thing.) 2013-01-17 22:08 (UTC)

Oh, I dunno. I always refer to I-5 as "that fucking bastard freeway."

But is that really a name or just a pejorative? [g] I do have to agree with you about I-5, although as a resident of Puyallup I really don't drive it all that often -- when I go to Seattle I ride the express bus most of the time.

I grew up in SoCal and spent a couple of years in Colorado as a teenager and college student, too. But I left California, in 1974, before people started using the article.

As for freeway vs. highway, what did me in was when I lived in Ohio and people kept calling the Interstate the expressway. That was just weird.

I did not know this! I can confirm I am in northern California. :-) (Also, in other parts of the country, we would say '3' like in Oregon and Oklahoma. So clearly it's the southern Californians who are weirdos...)

They don't say "hella" down south, either. ;>

I can attest to most of this from having grown up in northern CA, but, there are a couple of exceptions. Highway 1 is always Highway 1. There's some touristy name as well ("Coastal Hwy?") but natives don't refer to it that way. Hwy 101 on the other hand is "The 101." It's also "The Alameda" (Al-short a-mee-da or Al-a-may-da). I don't remember the number designation, but "The El Camino Real" (ry-ahl) is shortened by dropping Real instead of the article. Weirdly, there is also the San Tomas Expressway which has many lanes in each direction that gets heavily used but has speed limits of 40-45 mph. If you're being formal, it's pronounced "San Thomas Expressway" (english inflection), but if you're speaking to a native, it's "San To-Mas" (spanish inflection). I spent a good deal of my childhood on that road wondering why the name of the street changed like that. I still don't know why.

I grew up taking 17 to Santa Cruz, 280 to SF and The 101 to the south bay on up to Oakland. Numbered roads are either freeways/interstates or little back roads. Here in the midwest, a lot of county roads are lettered, but I can't honestly say if roads are similarly lettered in CA. It's a big blank.

I was a multi-generational Angelino, and you are absolutely right that it was never "on 1" down there but, rather, "on the 1". However, in our part of the state, we usually spoke of the 1 as "the PCH" for Pacific Coast Highway rather than "the 1" or "the Pacific Coast Highway." And my elderly mother confirmed this has been going on for many decades.

In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, we even used "the" with highway names rather than numbers: "the San Gabriel," "the Golden State," "the Rim of the World." Maybe it's because so many of our freeways initially shared names with very long and significant Southern California surface streets, resulting in "the Santa Monica" versus "Santa Monica Boulevard" or just "down on Santa Monica".

See, in the south bay we call it El Camino Real (no article). Agreed on Highway 1, but not 101 (no article).

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Two more things

More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.