Do you say ‘the 10’ or ‘the 101’? It’s a California thing

Second of two parts

Putting ‘the’ in front of freeway names — the 10, the 101 — is apparently a California thing, a southern California thing that crept into Arizona.

Los Angeles residents use the preceding the number of freeways, which is not true everywhere else, even in northern California, researcher Grant Geyer explained in 2001 in “‘The’ Freeway in Southern California,” in the journal American Speech.

He said it had to do with the long history of freeways there. Early on, not everyone used the to refer to Pacific Coast Highway or Cahuenga Pass Freeway. But in 1940, when the Pasadena Freeway opened, almost everyone said the.

The freeways there had names, such as the San Bernardino Freeway or the Ventura Freeway. Some encompassed multiple route numbers; the Hollywood Freeway was Route 66 and U.S. 101.

When California simplified its numbering system in 1964, the linguistic pattern was already set, Geyer wrote.

That usage may have crept into Arizona with Californians, said Matthew Prior, an associate professor of applied linguistics at Arizona State University.

In 2017, 60,000 people moved to Arizona from southern California, Prior noted from census figures, compared to 14,000 from Washington and 13,000 from Texas. And because of the proximity, we also went there.

It’s not unique to California and Arizona. People use it in other places, in parts of New York, for example. The regional use can mark where we’re from or where we learned to drive.

“Language is used to assert or maintain aspects of identity,” Prior said.

Karen Adams, a linguistics professor also at ASU, noticed it in 1984 when she moved to Arizona from Michigan. She’s surveyed her students and found those from Arizona use the before the number.

We adapt to a place, Adams said, by adopting the language.

So blame California if you don’t like it, but as I make my way back along the 51 to the 202, I’m going to think of it as the Arizona thing. We’ve adopted it.