> (*) Brings the problem of ambiguity I'm not even sure, if 'gallery' is
> understood by an English native (it's 'Galerie' in German).
This native English speaker would not.
gallery
1: spectators at a golf or tennis match
2: a porch along the outside of a building (sometimes partly
enclosed) [syn: {veranda}, {verandah}, {gallery}]
3: a room or series of rooms where works of art are exhibited
[syn: {gallery}, {art gallery}, {picture gallery}]
4: a long usually narrow room used for some specific purpose;
"shooting gallery"
5: a covered corridor (especially one extending along the wall
of a building and supported with arches or columns)
6: narrow recessed balcony area along an upper floor on the
interior of a building; usually marked by a colonnade
7: a horizontal (or nearly horizontal) passageway in a mine;
"they dug a drift parallel with the vein" [syn: {drift},
{heading}, {gallery}]
Looking at these definitions, you can see a link to the concept used
in CH for half-tunnels, but in UK the word Gallery is not used
for this. In fact, i cannot think of a half-tunnel in the UK. We
generally don't have to worry about avalanches or stone fall, the main
purpose of a gallery in CH.
It might be worth asking somebody in the USA. There could be a dialect
word which i as an British English speaker do not know about. Or they
have extended the 5th definition above to include roads?
Andrew
