Some dudes in NorCal, being rather jealous of the power of SoCal, have decided that “we are better, they are low brow, we are high brow” etc. One tiny difference is the amount and emphasis placed upon “the” before freeway number. Thus, these pseudo- elitists have seized upon this extremely trivial thing to be the Shibboleth between couth North and uncouth South. Not knowing they say it too.
Oddly enough, no one makes that mistake with Arkansas.
Here’s one: Ours really is Monty-Sell-O. And, yes, I know some people say Barrville for Berryville, but that’s not considered the official pronunciation. That’s just some people being lazy.
In fact, in general, we tend to dislike out accent being repeated back to us. In fact, most of us try to speak as close as we can to standard American English.
As for our neighbor state to the north, just point. Either way you go, half the people will tell you you are wrong. It seems so odd to us Northern Arkansans that you’d want to celebrate pronouncing that final I as if it were an A, even though you never do that anywhere else in your accent, but whatever.
Oh, and we don’t put “the” in front of our highways. The reason is that we see the highway number as a name. You wouldn’t say you are going to “the Main street,” would you? I’m not saying it bothers us, just that we don’t do it and don’t understand why anyone cares.
My interpretation:
‘Take the freeway south.’
‘Which freeway?’
‘The 405 freeway.’
I interpret the sentence as being ‘Take the freeway.’ ‘405’ or ‘I-405’ is the name, and one could reasonably say ‘Take I-405’ south’, but I think that as it is used in SoCal (and other places), you’re saying to take ‘the freeway’. You wouldn’t say ‘Take freeway to San Diego.’ You’d say ‘Take the freeway to San Diego.’ If you add ‘405’ to the sentence, it becomes an adjective, since it is describing which freeway: ‘Take the freeway called 405.’ => ‘Take the 405 freeway.’ In use, the noun (‘freeway’) is dropped and the sentence becomes ‘Take the 405.’ This is similar to a conversation that might be used at a Mexican restaurant:
‘Should I have the red sauce, or the green sauce?’
‘Have the red.’
Since we know that we’re talking about a sauce (or a freeway), the noun is taken as given.
Here are a few from Georgia-
Albany = All benny
Berlin = BUR lun (I have heard that it was ber LIN sometime before WWI or WWII)
Adel = AY dell
Eldorado = ell duh RAY doe
Dacula = duh CUE luh
Taliaferro county = tolliver
McDonough = mack donna
Locals get irritated when Yankees don’t pronounce the L in DeKalb (county). I will start pronouncing it when the locals quit pronouncing the L in salmon!
And Worester, MA has been pronounced “Wister” as long as I’ve been alive.
There’s no BO-ga-ta New Jersey. It’s ba-GO-ta. Out-of-state newscasters get this wrong every time.
And a character on 21 Jump Street once said he grew up in mun-AU-chee, New Jersey. If you grew up in Moonachie (or even bothered to call the borough hall), you’d know it’s pronounced MOON-auk-ee.
Perhaps it’s a very subliminal “the” that only special ears can hear. I spent about 35 years in Northern California and don’t recall hearing it, not a single time. (Obviously I heard it from Southerners talking about the freeways in their region.)
I only heard “Frisco” used by people who were obviously displaced. Instead, the City was often called simply “The City,” even by people in or near the higher-population San Jose.
ETA: A phrase like “The 280 Freeway” is in common use. It’s the abbreviated form, “The 280,” that wasn’t heard in the Bay Area.
Truman Capote will show you how to use your “articles”:
You know, up page, post 70 guizot even has a recording of a Norcal traffic reporter saying it. Norcal residents certainly do use it and I don’t get why they protest so much they don’t. Really it’s not like the GWB pronunciation of “nuclear’ or something.
I hear “Frisco” used by natives, but mostly as a joke. “The City” ? Only by a certain SF newspaper. Now that “SF” is so very common in text and etc, I do hear “EssEff” a lot.
Don’t say “New Ore-LEANS” while in New Orleans unless you want to be marked as a tourist. At least run it together as “New-ORE-lunz”.
I don’t have anything noteworthy to add, but when I see the thread title, I think to myself, “Hmmm. . . sounds like an Alanis Morissette song title.”
Wow. You really take this seriously, don’t you?
Saying “the 5” instead of “5” or “highway 5” is a southern California regionalism. That’s not a big deal. It’s not a good thing nor a bad thing. Pretending everyone else in the country says it doesn’t change what it is: an insignificant little piece of dialect.
I think there’s something a little more complicated going on, but I can’t quite place it. As was pointed out, saying “the 880 freeway” is commonplace. Most of the report’s uses that included “the” were of this nature. But there was also an example of “the 880 in Oakland”. It seems that “the” is more likely to appear if there is a noun phrase instead of just a single number. However, “101 South” by itself will never have the “the”, nor will any instance of a number by itself. I only listened to half of guizot link, but didn’t hear any contradiction to this.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:131, topic:666883”]
Wow. You really take this seriously, don’t you?
Saying “the 5” instead of “5” or “highway 5” is a southern California regionalism. That’s not a big deal. It’s not a good thing nor a bad thing. Pretending everyone else in the country says it doesn’t change what it is: an insignificant little piece of dialect.
[/QUOTE]
No, in fact the contrary . The dudes that take it seriously are the ones that insist its such a sharp dividing line, even tho it isn’t. It was other who mentioned what other states usage is. I didn’t even bring it up in th first place, it was others who insist it is important.
You are correct, it is insignificant, almost to the point of being nonexistent .
You can visit anytime. 
The W in Ka’a’awa is pronounced as V. Kah-ah-ah-vah. General rule: if the word starts with W, it’s pronounced as W, but if it’s inside the word, it’s V.
Thanks for the tip.
A general rule I follow is that Hawaiian words are pronounced as they’re spelled. (As I said, I’ve never been there; but we have an office in Hawaii and get data from there.)
Can you try? I just drove past it Saturday and need to pronounce it correctly in my head. 
Awww, you remembered! I’m touched!
I find your argument unpersuasive.
‘Take the avenue south.’
‘Which avenue?’
‘The Madison Avenue.’
“Shh, cow talk again.”
I don’t know whether “we” protest about it. I’m just sharing my experiences.
Three possible mitigations:
(1) California has great mobility. (Heck even I lived a year in SoCal – but before they had freeways.) It’s surprising that the “The”/“[del]the[/del]” differentiation can be maintained at all. Did you ask the alleged Norcal traffic reporter for her birth certificate?
(2) In the clip, she mentions “101 southbound”, “101 southbound”, “the 880 freeway”, “the 237 freeway”, “the 880 in oakland” … “The” is missing from both occurrences of “101”; that “the” is prepended when “freeway” is postpended is not in dispute; in “the 880 in oakland”, “freeway” can be considered elided. It may seem I’m grasping at straws, but the diction just doesn’t sound like Socal’s “the.”
(3) I moved to California when Eisenhower was President, and left under Clinton. I acept no responsibility for subsequent changes! 
You changed the noun to a proper noun.