"carmageddon" -- word of the weekend?

[Laurence Horn]

On Jul 14, 2011, at 7:51 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 7/13/2011 08:02 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> On Jul 13, 2011, at 7:36 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>> 
>> > Closure of I405 in Los Angeles from Friday night July 15 through 5:00
>> > a.m. Monday July 18.
>> 
>> Make that "the 405", as correctly conveyed an hour ago on ABC's World News
> 
> Isn't it "also" Interstate 405?  It is so labelled on
> http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/06/405_freeway_closure_july_16_17_traffic_los_angeles_subway.php
> (and I'm not familiar with West Coast dialect).
> 
Indeed. Sorry, no criticism intended--rather than claiming the "I-405" reference was incorrect, I was alluding to one of the longish threads we had a few years back on the use of the definite article in southern California in freeway nomenclature. (As I recall, we determined the isogloss was somewhere north of Santa Barbara.)

LH  

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