Re: the 101 or just 101 explained

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Funny how language changes.  I never hear anybody say "the 80 Highway" or
"the 80 Freeway", just "Highway 80" or just "80" (but, oddly, not "Freeway
80").

I always thought Spanish was an influence here, but it seems like it was
government conformity that did it all.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Sat, 24 May 2025 08:52:13 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 > from electoral-vote.com:
 > S.C. in , asks: I tell my visitors that they can 
 > take either 280 or 101 to get to San Francisco, and when giving 
 > other directions I would never say "take the El Camino Real" as that 
 > would be a bilingual redundancy; to get to Oakland it's "take El 
 > Camino to 237 to 880 North."
 > 
 > So, why do people in Southern Ca (or at least in the Los 
 > Angeles area) stick "the" in front of highway numbers? At what point 
 > does Interstate 5 become "the 5", and does it stay that all the way 
 > to San Diego? Similarly, does Interstate 10 stay "the 10" all the 
 > way to Blythe, or even into Arizona, or does the obsession with the 
 > definite article end at some point?
 > 
 > (V) & (Z) answer: This is a pretty easy question, though maybe a bit 
 > tricky to explain.
 > 
 > To start, most adjectives are prepositive, meaning they come in 
 > front of the noun, and therefore generally have an article. A 
 > minority of adjectives are postpositive, meaning they come after the 
 > noun, and the article is not used. For example, you might well 
 > describe Charles III as "the reigning king," because "reigning" is a 
 > prepositive adjective. But you would not describe him as "king the 
 > regnant," because "regnant" is a postpositive adjective.
 > 
 > For most of the country, the first major roadways they had were 
 > highways. And in federal government parlance, highway designations 
 > had "highway" or "route" first, and then the number second. For 
 > example, "Highway 66" or "Route 66." The number is the adjective, 
 > and since it is postpositive, there's no article. Nobody 
 > called/calls it "Route the 66." However, when people give 
 > directions, they usually skip anything that's implied. Since only 
 > highways were known by numbers, there was really no need to include 
 > "highway" or "route," and people got in the habit of just using the 
 > number, e.g. "take 66 to Lakeside Drive."
 > 
 > In the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government constructed the first 
 > freeways. And to distinguish freeways from highways, the decision 
 > was made to put the number in the prepositive position. So, Highway 
 > 66 BUT the 405 Freeway. Most parts of the country kept their 
 > existing habit of just using numbers, so "take 15 to Lakeside 
 > Drive." But Southern Ca, because its population did not 
 > explode until World War II, basically went from the "road" era to 
 > the "freeway" era with no intermediate step. As such, they included 
 > the grammatically correct "the" and never developed the habit of 
 > excluding it. They DID drop the implied "freeway," such that 
 > directions were generally communicated in this form: "take THE 405 
 > to Wilshire Blvd."
 > 
 > It's characteristic of all of Southern Ca, since all the 
 > major population centers (San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, etc.) 
 > all exploded at the same time due to World War II, and so 
 > experienced the same road-to-freeway jump. We don't know quite how 
 > far north or east you have to go before it dies out. Probably Las 
 > Vegas, to the east, since most people living in between SoCal and 
 > Las Vegas are displaced Southern Cans. Maybe something like 
 > San Luis Obispo to the north (about 250 miles north of L.A.).