We were in a slowdown on I-25 north of Trinidad, and some impatient drivers were brodying across the shoulder to the frontage road right there – which ended up being a net loss for everyone, because the slowdown was due to traffic was being sent off the freeway to go through Walsenburg and past the construction, but that frontage road ended at the overpass, so those people had to alternate with the rest of us at the top of the exit. And in that area, the alternate routes would take you 20 or 30 miles around (though, 30 extra miles at speed might be a wash compared to an hour at a crawl).
Around that same time (2008), I received a TomTom as a Father’s Day gift. Very handy for navigating to various ball fields and elementary/middle/high school gyms for athletic contests.
One of the voice options they picked was Snoop Dogg. My favorite bit of editorializing on his part was “how much cash you got” when deciding if I wanted to take a toll road.
A miss was the Darth Vader option - he really should have said “I find your lack of faith disturbing” if I took a different route and it had to recalculate the route.
Oh man I forgot about that feature. I think we had one of the Monty Python guys.
There was a visual warning message with the TomTom that we could only interpret as “don’t put it in a sack." That nonsensical directive was a household joke for years.
I had a GPS program (that no longer exists, sadly) where one of the voice options was a cultured British accent.
I loved it because it made me feel like Batman getting directions from Alfred Pennyworth.
The software was subscription-only (a cheap one, something like $2 a month) that I gladly paid because I loved that voice. I was sad when it went away. The generic Google Maps voice is boring.
As long as it was not constantly complaining that you were driving on the wrong side.
It didn’t, but it did sometimes struggle to pronounce words. Puyallup was “poo-WEE-lup” and it couldn’t pronounce “Milwaukee” either.
When there’s a concert at the Xfinity Center near Boston, they put up signs telling people to stay on the highway to the “official” exit for it, and if you try to take some of the back roads from an exit or two earlier, police check where you’re going and will send you back to the highway.
Why? Why do they care?
Because the waze “shortcuts” to take back roads the final 5 miles to the concert go through residential neighborhoods and get very backed up very quickly, so the residents can’t go anywhere (or come home) for 3+ hours on concert nights.
The various navigation voices struggle with Spanish pronunciations too. A few youra aog when we were looking to buy a house I’d load three or four at a whack to have a look-see. Once when we were traveling she advised a left turn of Cordess Street. What? I don’t remember anything like that around here… Oh-h-h, Cortés.
The main street to the west of me, Mesa, is pronounced “Meesa,” like Jar-jar at his worst and even without the Spanish, the main miler to the east, Stapley, is “Stappley.”
There’s a street around here called “Clague”, which the locals pronounce with one syllable and a long A. Google’s voice used to call it “Clagoo”, and now says it as “Clog”.
Google’s voice calls Monte Sano in Huntsville, AL “Mahnt-eh Sah-no”, which doesn’t even have an excuse that it is the original Spanish since as far as I know “Monte” would be pronounced more like “Moan-tay”.
But the locals pronounce it either Mont-eh Say-no or Monneh Say-no. I’ve only been there three times, but that means it’s extra-annoying for me when it does happen, because Google could force me into a bad habit instead of having the local pronunciation ingrained in me through repetition.
The app and the people kind of bracket the Spanish: MON-teh SA-noh. Single vowel sound in every syllable.
But really the common use by the locals should be first choice.
Google Navi mangles the pronunciation of Japanese words when in the English mode.
I guess that they haven’t figured out if you are giving directions in a particular country that it would be better to use the local pronunciation.
There are a couple of these signs in VT, NH, and ME, especially near ski areas. People get stranded every year in winter.
Spanish in Spain, yes. Spanish in Mexico would pronounce it phonetically the way you wrote it above.
“Sano” though should be pronounced with the “a” like “sand”, not like “ah”, in either Spanish dialect.
Agreed. Just like how when pronouncing Des Moines in Washington, the second “s” isn’t silent.
Kemin dess las coats dess nay-jess.
Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges
Living in Québec, the GPS pronunciation of street names can be pretty funny.
No, the vowel of “sano” /sano/ is not like vowel of English “sand” /sænd/ in any dialect of Spanish.
Sure sounds like it to me.
Officially, the town says that it is silent. Not that anyone cares. I get annoyed when “Snoqualmie” is pronounced with a hard L, but that could just be me.