No, it’s not. French speakers will recognize it immediately though.
Subject doubling is common in spoken French. Thus, “Le garcon mangeait une pomme” (The boy was eating an apple) is colloquially expressed through “Le garcon, il mangeait une pomme.” The comma placed after the noun does not indicate there is a pause - it only signals the fact that the subject is being doubled. I expect the newsreaders in the OP pause after the noun before doubling it with a pronoun, but French speakers often utter the noun and the pronoun in a single flow, with no pause between them.
When it’s inappropriately used, yes, it’s as bad as regional mispronunciations such as “athelete.” The rest of the US seems to get by fine with “I-5” “Highway 16” etc. instead of turning an entire roadway into an object. Or just using the number, which in context of local news and traffic is shorter and completely unambiguous. No one says “The Gower is…” or “The Hollywood Boulevard is…” and adding an article to the freeway/highway names is superfluous fluffery.
I suspect it’s some kind of Spanish influence on the language in SoCal, but I doubt there’s any way to prove that.
To be fair, a roadway *is *an object. Still, though, it always surprises me how worked up people get, and the damning judgments they make, based on nothing but an inconsequential aspect of language.
Actually,I find it a lot less offensive than “according to an official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release any official statement about the investigation”. There is way, way too much of this cover-your-ass baloney stirred into news copy, when alo we want to know is that the hell happened. Sometime in print news accounts, you have to go almost all the way to the bottom to find what the story is all about, once you ae through all the disclaimers.
People who talk “off the record” are vital to journalists, especially in anything government or large corporation-related where no-one is authorised to say anything except the official PR line, which may or may not line up with reality.
The “according to a senior source at the Ministry of Silly Walks” thing is to let the reader know that A) The journo didn’t just make it up, B) There’s Something Going On and C) The newspaper/journo has the connections to get information for the readers even when “They” won’t speak officially about it.
Plenty of Chicagoans – not just newsreaders – routinely refer to “The Edens” or “The Kennedy” or “The Eisenhower/Ike” or “The Dan Ryan” or “The Stevenson” or “The Tri-State” or “The Skyway”. In all my 44 years, I’ve never heard someone say “I took Kennedy downtown” or “I took Ike to Westchester” or “I took Tri-State to Hinsdale,” so people around here don’t consider adding the definite article to expressway/tollway names superfluous. :rolleyes:
When it’s a name (be it “the Tri-State” or “the M24”) it’s one thing.
When it’s a number (I-5, Highway 27) it’s another. I’m not saying it makes sense, but neither does the British/American division between articles for hospital, university, etc.
I am hardly the first person to note that the Southern California neism of referring to numbered highways as “the” is irritating and pointless.
Plenty of Chicagoans – not just newsreaders – routinely refer to “The Edens” or “The Kennedy” or “The Eisenhower/Ike” or “The Dan Ryan” or “The Stevenson” or “The Tri-State” or “The Skyway”. In all my 44 years, I’ve never heard someone say “I took Kennedy downtown” or “I took Ike to Westchester” or “I took Tri-State to Hinsdale,” so people around here don’t consider adding the definite article to expressway/tollway names superfluous. :rolleyes: