Wikipedia weiß alles!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_circle

Siehe auch hier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout

Also so wie Wikipedia es beschreibt würde das heissen, dass beides, traffic circle und roundabout in US English geht, je nachdem, wie die Vorfahrtsregelung ist? Das klingt irgendwie....weird ;-)Und klärt auch nicht wirklich die sprachlichen Unterschiede von US/UK...hm. Bin immer noch ratlos und nicht wirklich überzeugt.

Is there a native US around? Help...please :-)))

kreisverkehr heißt zumindestens an der ostküste der usa rotary. ich verbrachte dort dass letze jahr und kreisverkehr wurde immer als rotary ausgeschildert.

ich hoffe, ich konnte euch weiterhelfen.

In U.S.A. sowie Kanada sind "roundabouts" so gut wie unbekannt, was eine Uebersetzung ins U.S. Englische erheblich erschwert. Aber "roundabout" oder "traffic circle" muesste dienen.

I'm an American native speaker and English teacher, and the US term is definitely "traffic circle." "Roundabout" is the usual British term; I've never seen a real Brit write "rotary" (not to say it never happens).

Good that Doug has revived this old thread. And the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (online) does include traffic circle (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tra...).

However, it also gives rotary as a synonym for that (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rotary). In fact, it says that rotary is the main term and traffic circle is a variant.

Like Doug, I find this odd. In google, over three million listings are returned for traffic circle. Far fewer pop up for rotary+traffic, rotary junction, rotary intersection, etc.

I rely on MWCD, but I must say, I do not always agree with it!

Rotary sounds wrong because it implies something that is moving (rotating - like a rotary engine).

And I disagree with Bob C. that "roundabout" is virtually unknown in the U.S. They are becoming more and more common and I think most educated people would know exactly what you were talking about.

Traffic circle sounds fine to me as well.

https://www.nysdot.gov/regional-offices/regio...

Work will include the full reconstruction of Raymond Avenue, ... A third roundabout will replace the traffic signal at the Collegeview Avenue and Fulton Avenue ... For this reason, the City of Poughkeepsie, in partnership with NYSDOT, ...

acoording to the New York State Department of Transportation


How about that? :-)))

As it happens my office is around the corner from those roundabouts.

Bill, even if roundabouts, rotary intersections, and traffic circles are becoming more common in the U.S. and Canada (which is news to me), they are still relatively rare--certainly in comparison to U.K. and Europe.

The more so if it were true that one has to be part of the better educated and well-traveled class to understand the terms.

But I don't believe many people in North America would have difficulty with any of these expressions.

Well, Helmi just gave us an example that shows that roundabouts are very much alive in the U.S.

Actually, Andreas was the first to do so in #2.

When I set my TomTom navigator to BE it says "roundabout", when I set it to AE it says "circle", if that is an indication of usage.

... are the only terms I'm familiar with, and I wouldn't expect to hear either one on the opposite side of the pond, though a reasonable number of Americans would probably recognize 'roundabout' as one of those cute British terms.

To describe the concept to people who aren't familiar with them (which probably includes a lot of Americans), in a pinch you could also probably just try something like 'circular intersection,' maybe something like 'hub-and-spoke intersection.'

The most common associations with 'rotary' in AE are rotary engines and Rotary Clubs. The word may be used somewhere by someone as a noun meaning a traffic circle, but I've never heard it in that context, and just on the face of it it doesn't seem like a very good choice, because it's normally an adjective, and the intersection itself doesn't rotate -- that would sound like the cars were driving onto some sort of turntable.

Since the thread has found new life . . .

I agree with hm -- us that "traffic circle" is standard AE and roundabout is standard BE. Here in my hometown of Long Beach, CA, we have one major traffic circle that is known simply as "the traffic circle". If I say that something is located "on Lakewood just off the traffic circle" every local knows where to look. There is a secondary ring road that is named "Outer Circle Way". BTW, many people in town dislike this intersection and avoid it; but I think it's because they don't understand it and therefore don't know how to drive it. There's another one in the City of Orange, but it is known as "The Circle" or "The Circle in Orange", depending on whether you're closer to Orange or Long Beach.

When I talk with my well-traveled friends about the things in England, we all call them roundabouts. (I guess because we are talking about the British version, we use the BE term.)

@hm I suspect it is a regional thing in the US. I only knew the term "rotary" when growing up in New England. The above Sagamore Rotary was a famous bottle neck to Cape Cod which has since been replaced by a fly over.

Timo, thanks for supplementing my vocabulary.

Now I'm curious. I've chimed in from Southern California with "traffic circle". You've provided us with "rotary" from New England. What about the Pacific Northwest, the rest of the Southwest, the Midwest, the South, the Northeast, the Atlantic Seaboard, various parts of Canada? Where in the US and Canada are people acquainted with each term?

Yes, that's interesting, thanks.

#5 mentioned Maine.

Maybe Norbert will pass by and look it up for us in DARE and report back, or someone else would like to try DARE via G**gle B**ks or something.

Then the question becomes if you can eat a hoagie and drink a frappe while driving around a rotary ... (-;

In the Midwest (at least where I am) there simply don't seem to be any traffic circles/roundabouts.

How about reading from a clipboard propped on the steering wheel, speaking on a cellphone, and typing on a laptop placed on the passenger seat while driving? I saw this one day on the freeway; now add in a traffic circle/rotary/roundabout. . . .

You guys wanting to know about regional terminology, availability, and history of traffic circles might want to have a look at #2, way up above.

According to Wikipedia modern roundabouts are different from traffic circles. In the past years they constructed numerous new Kreisverkehre in southwestern Germany where I come from. A very reasonable structure. Much better than intersections with or without traffic lights when there is a certain amount of traffic.

Bob: spoilsport. :-)

Seriously, though, the article does not answer the question of regional terminology. The Circle in Orange meets all of the criteria for a roundabout; it's still called "the circle". The traffic circle in Long Beach meets all of the criteria for a roundabout except speed (it allows entry at 35 mph rather than 25 mph); it's still called "the traffic circle". The article gives technical definitions, not popular terminology - and the two can be very different things.

Joan Houston Hall (ed.), Dictionary of American Regional English, vol IV:
rotary n Also rotary circle  chiefly NEng See Map Cf traffic circle
A road junction in which traffic moves in one direction around a circular island
[...]

à votre commande, madame! :-)

I've known them as rotaries for about 20 years. I first saw them in New England (the Boston area and Maine are really the parts of New England I am familiar with).

Roundabouts (rotaries) do exist in the Midwest. I know of one built fairly recently in Iowa and, according to one website, the highest volume roundabout (judged in vehicles per hour) is currently in Livingston County, Michigan.

http://mtjengineering.com/sagamore_rotary.html

"Properly designed high capacity roundabouts have proven themselves to perform extremely well throughout the US. There are good examples as widespread as California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Maryland, New York, Utah and many others."

You know the slogan: Rotaries, they aren't just for New England anymore.

Wow, what a crowd on a quiet weekend. Nice to see all of you.




@M. Juffa: Oh, je vous remercie, monsieur, très aimable, très chevaleresque.

(La?) Nouvelle-Angleterre donc (? alors?). Intéressant, ça.

Et ... à ma commande? Ça me sonne tentant!

Mais ... pour commander à quelqu'un, j'aurai certainement besoin de plus que cinq mots françaises. Quel dommage.



Back to the topic at hand:

The speed question is interesting. In the UK they zip around those things at a pretty nippy pace, and they know exactly where they're going, so woe to you if you don't. I've heard of hapless tourists who spent months going around and around and around because they were too scared to try to move over to the exit lane. I was glad I didn't have to navigate the ones in Colombia, where 'lanes' are an extremely hypothetical concept in the first place.

The city where my grandparents lived has one traffic circle that I'm aware of, around a fountain. People tend to feel that the fountain is the main attraction, the circle only a byproduct. When I was little, we used to drive by the fountain (slowly) just to ooh and ah when it was tinted with colored lights at night. (-:

Apropos Frankreich: Dort heissen die Dinger ganz einfach rond-point. Der schönste (und schnellste) ist dieser: http://therockblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/0...

And then there is the MAGIC ROUNDABOUT in Hemel Hempsteadt outside of London, 6 single roundabouts combined into one big roundabout...... A peson could get stuck in thre forever.....
BTW: We have roundabouts in Southern Wisonsin, and there are more and more popping up....

... fuer US-Amerika! I've been driving for twenty years in the US (and riding in cabs) .... no rotary/roundabout anything anywhere. Hasn't caught up yet. Picked up a car in Milwaukee in March 2009 - guess I missed it.