You can’t spell “Whatever!” without T-H-E.
Yesterday I lapsed into SoCal dialect by calling good ol’ Junipero Serra “the 280” and was reprimanded for my use of the indefinite article “the.”
Surely this is not a “Frisco”-level faux pas on my part? I dutifully refer to San Francisco as “The City” even though I know Oakland and San Jose are not merely a collection of tall buildings.
Is there anything else I should know about? Any other terminology that might cause what seems to me to be frighteningly easy internal bruising?
Sorry, but I’m a little grouchy, having traversed [the] highly trafficked 280 an hour and a half earlier than usual to attend an 8:30 meeting.
just use the word “hella” sxtensively for the next few days and you’ll be fine.
Bronwyn – as a fellow SoCal transplant, I can empathize. It took me about a year to translate in my head before speaking the “the.”
Frankly, I think it’s a special kind of NorCal weirdness that in a public-trans-friendly-yet-don’t-take-away-my-car city, they don’t show their freeways the same kind of respect that we do down south, by affording them the definite articles they so richly deserve . . . .
My personal verbage: I refer to all freeways existing exclusively North of San Jose by they numbers only (380, 280, 85, 80), but freeways which will take me to THE Southland are “the” – the 101, the 5. Technically, I suppose 5 becomes the 5 around Kettlemen City – that In’N’Out is the official halfway marker so far as I can tell . . .
Don’t let ’em getcha down.
And don’t ever, EVER say “hella.”
They won’t let you back into LA.
But I’m free and clear for amusing overuse of the word “dude,” right?
They dont have any tall buildings in SJ – much less a collection.
Yup, an observation a friend and I made after living in LA for a bit. In LA, use “the” before highways. In SF, don’t. Odd, isn’t it?