Two more things

[dira]

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?

Comments

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

[waketosleep]

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

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

[everbright]

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!

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

[sara]

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.

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

[waketosleep]

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.

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

[sara]

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.)

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

[waketosleep]

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.)

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

[mmegaera]

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.

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

[montanaharper]

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.

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

[mmegaera]

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.