Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
oceanservice.noaa.gov
oceanservice.noaa.gov
At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. You could imagine that the maritime world could have gone with a similar convention. But the downside is that on very rare occasions someone along the way gets confused and the doctor operates on the wrong side of the body.
The theatrical world takes an intermediate approach, where they use the terms "stage left / stage right", which always refer to the perspective of an actor onstage facing the audience. Then the word "stage" tells you the perspective, but you still keep the words left/right so you don't have to memorize two completely separate words.
Some of the terms: dorsal/ventral, proximal/distal, anterior/posterior, superior/inferior, oral/aboral, basal/apical
When you're describing something like a microbe, the terms get fairly arbitrary; which is the "head" end of some little blobby thing?
In (musical) theatre we do it the other way around. The we call it "stage left" and "stage right" or "SL and SR" since we use abbreviations everywhere in our notes. It's always from the "stage manager's perspective" which is traditionally (but not always) facing the audience.
If the stage manager is facing a different way that doesn't affect the meaning of left/right.
It's from their perspective because they are basically the only person who isn't running around like a chook with their head cut off (because their eyes are glued to the script and video screens - https://youtu.be/DP2QOmN57iU?t=82).
Case in point: my wife and I live in Australia (have done so all our lives), and my wife had a 2008 Ford Focus, made in South Africa (a RHD country). Indicator stalk was on the left, wiper on the right (aka "European" style). She then upgraded to a 2020 Ford Focus, made in Germany (it's the wagon model), and the wiper is on the left, indicator on the right. Which confuses me, as I drive a BMW, which has indicators on the left and wipers on the right.
I am used to the indicators on the left though when driving my BMW, so I experience the classic "wipers instead of indicators" dance many times when I drive my wife's car. As most cars nowadays are automatics, I guess this reasoning is falling out of relevance more and more.
I also want to note that not all Australian built cars had wipers on the left and indicators on the right – many GM Holden models like the Kingswood and early Commodore models from the 1980s had them both on the one stalk – that stalk being on the right of course.
To be clear in the UK the wheel is on the right but the indicator is still on the left side of the wheel as in a European LHD car, just to keep things different.
Like position of reverse gear on a H-style gear stick, some left-and-up, some right-and-down; some with a collar interlock, some with a button, some you push the whole stick down towards the ground ...
Anecdote 1) In NZ I saw a car in the middle of a busy roundabout, wipers on, passengers visibly confused and crying.
Anecdote 2) A kayak guide also mentioned, that if you see someone entering a roundabout, windshield wiping, on a sunny day, you just wait and let them do their thing.
Anecdote 3) After a month in NZ I came back to Germany and actually muscle memory let me to use wipers instead of indicators on the autobahn when changing lanes. Oof.
Royal Oak has an ice cream parlour with a good view of the carnage.
I was surprised how easily my body got used to left-hand shifting, but I will say this: I've been driving stick shifts for nearly 40 years, and never miss a gear in the US. However, driving in the UK I find that left hand is NOWHERE NEARLY AS GOOD at distinguishing 1st from 3rd as my right is. Muscle memory!
Steering-column manual shifting (e.g. "three on the tree") is pretty much extinct today, but I assume that the "move the whole driver section over" thing means that column-shifted manuals in the UK were still shifted with the right hand. Does anyone know?
He’s a sport sedan, so it applies.
I still use is when checking tyre pressures for example, they are handy and unambiguous acronyms. For example Off Side Front ( OSF ) would be the drivers side front mostly.
Sometimes, you want to use passenger/driver side: for example, on my car, brake flushing procedure is always rear passenger first, no matter driving side.
And sometime you want to use left/right, which is always assumed to be according to the driver's position (so it's reversed when facing the engine), because some things aren't reversed, no matter the driving side: for example, on my car, the BCM and hood latch are always on the right side (which makes it inconvenient to open the hood for a left-side driving car).
P.S.: how do I know for certain? A friend has the exact same model but with opposite driving position because it's a UK import.
Generally the indicators will be operated with the hand that's furthest from the centre so that you can change gear in a manual car and turn the indicators on at the same time.
Australia, Japan, New Zealand amongst others all operate their indicators with the right hand. Not in the UK though.
Even though we drive on the left our indicators swapped to match other EU[0] countries that drive on the right sometime in the 1980s.
I drive a manual car and you just get used to doing both with the same hand. All done via subconscious muscle memory.
In fact I never really gave it much though until going round a corner in an automatic hire car in Christchurch, New Zealand. Wipers scraping across a dry screen, my hand desperately hunting for the missing gear stick as other cars hooted at me...
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0. Let's just ignore elephant in the room for now.
Didn't know that! So how pervasive is this principal? Would it apply to a descriptive reference to a diagram in a book for example?
I thought they just sent them to radiology?
[%] usually, because this is HN
The E roads of Europe are generally numbered that way too[1], though exceptions exist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_E-road_network#N...
I think generally in Europe people think in terms of landmarks rather than fixed directions.
- relative: in relation to the viewer (e.g. The mouse is to my right)
- absolute: using some coordinate system, such as cardinal (e.g. Plant is on the North side of the room)
- intrinsic: relative, but with respect to another object and not the viewer (e.g. the TV is on top of the TV stand which is opposite of the door)
It is worth mentioning that this is overly simplified and that there is a lot more nuance to all this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_spatial_cognition
Alot of the literature also makes hay about these language speakers having preternatural skills at maintaining a cardinal orientation mentally. I don't doubt they're good at it, but I suspect that that skill is something that has only recently become uncommon in the industrialized world. As a kid growing up in the U.S., being able to keep track of cardinal orientation was something I understood as a skill expected of men, and not by tracking the sun or consciously using other obvious markers. It was quite obviously a vestigial gendered skill at that point--noteworthy if you had any proficiency at it--but clearly one within recent memory of male adults. Moreover, AFAIU, there's also research showing that Americans tend to use cardinal directions and navigation more than many European countries, presumably related to our lived geography.
Interestingly, the literature on Guugu Yimithirr says that cardinal orientation accuracy relative to the Earth is much better the further away the described location. For descriptions closer to home (i.e. the central city/village of the group), accuracy was often off by 30+ degrees, seemingly because cardinal orientation is more dominated by familiar local topographic features. Moreover, IIRC, it seems cardinal direction isn't absolute in these languages. Which, at least intuitively, makes alot of sense to me. For example, the Bay Area is askew; when giving directions "north" is closer to north-west (middle peninsula, East Bay) or north-by-north-west (city), but everybody (conscious or not) is very consistent about the rotation and bending.
Wahern is referring to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis[0] (Linguistic Relativity). I do find that this is also often misunderstood. I'm in your camp about the directions. I've always viewed linguistic relativity as just saying that your language is a framework. It should be relatively obvious that if you use something a lot that you'll be good at it. You'll find that mountaineers, sailors, and pilots are better than most at of the population because they use cardinal directions a lot. It is experimentally provable that you can make your brain prioritize rather arbitrary things. For example, get a watch and set it to beep every hour. You'll probably get a better sense of time (especially if you can get different tones for 15 minute intervals). So what I'm saying is that the weak Sapir-Whorf is well recognized (what we discussed) but very few realistically believe the strong Sapir-Whorf.
But either way, if anyone reading these comments hasn't been interested in languages before I promise you that they are a lot cooler than you imagine. Far from just communication (which is rather incredible in the first place) and if you're interested in LLMs you should learn a minimal amount of linguistics.
Outdoor recreation often uses climbers left/right and skiers left/right (even when there's no rock or snow) to orient direction relative to slope, which is similarly descriptive and clear to those who haven't heard the terms before.
Except for rivers, where True Left and True Right are commonly used in New Zealand for hiking and kayaking, and I can never remember which way round they go!
Same for skiers’ left and right.
In geography left and right banks of a river are always in the direction of the flow
Isn't there some river where the flow goes either way depending on tide? I'm thinking it might be in Alaska, but there might be more than one.
A better example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonl%C3%A9_Sap#Geography:
“As the monsoon rain begins, the water level of the river begins to rise. As the water level continues to rise, the flow of the river reverses. The water level of the Tonlé Sap increases by about 10 metres (33 ft), the flow of the Mekong gradually decreases at the end of the rainy season, and the flow of the Tonlé Sap then reverses and began to replenish the flow of the Mekong.”
Although in this instance, I think it's more common to talk about north/island/south in Nantes rather than left/right banks. While Antwerp's part on the left bank is literally called "left bank" (Linkeroever).
I suspect the reason he made a meal of this subject (and the reason he insists on using the left/right terminology) is because he finds it challenging.
I learned it with the Seine, in Paris: the left bank is to the south of the right bank. It's also where the bulk of the 1968 political protest happened; the protestors were leftists. The Seine generally flows south to north, emptying into the English Channel.
"I'm on the left side of the boat, and hold an apple in my left hand." The boat has a clearly distinguishable bow and stern, so it provides a frame of reference.
While this is true, we (at least in England) would normally say "leave the buoy to starboard" (though when racing we'd call it a 'mark' rather than a buoy). Perhaps it's habit, I'm not sure, but it's generally unambiguous.
In the context of a channel, the buoys (marks) are coded port and starboard, coloured red and green, and shaped like a can or a cone respectively.
When navigating a channel into harbour, the port marks are left to the port of the ship, and the starboard marks to starboard.
Except when weird species seize their feisty foreign neighbours.
In Region A (Europe, Greenland, Africa, most of Asia, most of Oceania) port marks are red and starboard marks are green.
In Region B (North and South America, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan) port marks are green and starboard marks are red.
Understatement of the week... pretty much everything on a boat has a different word for it. Often for practical reasons, sometimes purely traditional reasons. It is nice because it binds one to nautical tradition leading back centuries/millenia.
"tiller" is just the thing that controls the position of the rudder, which I think most people know about. (That said, nobody in aviation calls their rudder pedals the "tiller", so it might be a strictly nautical term.)
It's a good thing I'm not at the helm ;)
Without farming/sailing we'd go 20000 years back
That's the hallmark of industrialization, right there :).
In case anyone thinks the important bits stopped at the age of sail.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/telltale
>also tell-tale, "discloser of secrets," 1540s, from tell (v.) + tale. As an adjective from 1590s. Phrase tell a tale "relate a false or exaggerated story" is from late 13c.
Is it maybe that the nautical term comes from plain English?
You’ll still hear folks say “hit the head” referring to using the restroom.
[1] https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/56264/when-did-h...
30 degrees should be enough to prevent toxic hazards. Sitting on the head on a tilting ship, during upwind sailing, is prone to other hazards though.
After that, there's some fun slang that's nautical. Chockablock comes from the blocks (pulleys) getting jammed on each other when multiple ropes are being worked on. "Not enough room to swing a cat" refers to the Cat o' Nine Tails which was a whip used for punishment on board ships.
Of course, I'm not even including the influx from containerisation! Helm, tiller, etc. etc.
Not obvious what it originally meant.
Rig (noun): The mast and supporting stays on a boat. (oil rigs, "big rig" come from this I think).
Rig (verb): To put the sails up and tie on the sheets and other lines that control sails. ("Let's rig this up." == "Let's set this up.")
Posh (my favourite, though I doubt it's actually true): Port Out Starboard Home. When travelling from England to India around the tip of Africa, it was favourable to have a cabin on the port side on the way to India and starboard on the way back as it would be in the shade most of the time and a little cooler in the sun, with a view of the land.
See also: Change tack / try a different tack, right the ship, stay the course, (to be) swamped, "At a rate of knots" (very fast), keep an even keel, keel over.
Swedish (also picking a lot from German, of course) has the same word ("lä", and no I'm not going to try to describe the pronunciation) but our usage is wider in scope. In Swedish lä is simply "out of the wind", and not restricted to use onboard a vessel. Cool, didn't know that about English.
Wiktionary talks about posh coming from the Romani language, meaning half, in monetary terms, as in half a crown. Seems believable to me, a lot of modern terms come from traveller’s languages and argots and such. See also tory and whig.
We're going to need some leeway on the requirements for this project in order to finish on schedule otherwise we'll have to change tacks on the plan.
* Taken aback
* Above board
* Adrift or at sea
* Afloat versus underwater
* Ahead
* All hands
* Anchored
* Awash
* Batten down the hatches
* Bitter end
* Boiler room
* Buoyed up
* By and large
I stopped after B. Also, "cut of your jib", of course.
Words that refer to older things have more latin roots and are thus similar. Very newly created words also are similar because of all the english loan words. E.g computer= la computadora.
[1] https://www.spanish.academy/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-nauti...
I don't know Spanish, but "molino" looks like French "moulin", which is a mill; a windmill is "moulin a vent".
So I reckon "very different" is an exaggeration.
Modern English lost the "n" part, but it was present in Middle English, milne.
"Mjolnir" means something like "crusher" and the noun "mjol" (flour) means "having been ground up". For example, it can be combined as vetemjöl (wheat flour) or stenmjöl (ground stone or stone powder).
Ah - "mjol" as flour must be cognate with "meal". I hadn't previously associated meal with mills, but it makes sense.
Port and starboard used to be "babordo" and "tribordo" in Italian but they were replaced by "sinistra" (the very word used to say "left") and "dritta".
you mean unlike French?
This was new for me.
The Spanish words carro, carreta, coche, carretilla, carrito all mean "something that has wheels on it", but the meaning keeps changing between car, horse drawn carriage, baby stroller, shopping cart, horse drawn cart or toy car between countries.
Fortunately it's easy to figure out from context and doesn't have possible misunderstandings as the Spanish word for straw.
What/where are the misunderstandings for sorbeto?
https://www.woodwardspanish.com/how-to-say-computer-spanish-...
On checking, it looks like there is a short (but very mountainous) border: https://maps-spain.com/maps-spain-geography/spain-language-m...
Also, we used to use computador/computadora in the old times (60's/70's).
French fromage Italian formagio
Spanish queso English cheese Dutch kaas
Languages are so weird :)
In other words, the reason that Spanish is similar to English/Dutch here is that they borrowed the Spanish word, becoming more like Spanish. The reason Italian and French aren't similar to Spanish is that they changed while Spanish didn't.
My French relatives however, insist that this is not real cheese, as it is not fermented. But the Norwegian language has no such distinction -- the 'brunost' is an instance of 'mysost'; 'cheese produced from whey'. This is no less real cheese than the one you ferment from caseine.
This naturally led me down a rabbit hole of etymological investigation.
The best conclusion I've reached so far, is that the Germanic words stemming from 'kase', referring to caseine, naturally refer to cheeses that would mostly be fermented, as this is what happens with the solid caseine when you leave it around for a bit. Whereas Norwegian 'ost', stemming from 'yste', the verb for separating the caseine from the whey, makes no such distinction.
And ironically, the Latin-stemming words 'fromage', 'formagio', stem from Latin 'formicum'; something that is cast in a form. Having nothing at all to do with fermentation or even milk!
There are two conclusions here, one being that the dictionary translation of words does not capture somewhat-subtle but sometimes important distinctions between words.
The second conclusion is that my French relatives are wrong and brown cheese is in fact fromage. But not cheese, I will concede as much.
Casein was not discovered before cheese was. 'kase' doesn't refer to casein. Casein, the family of proteins, is named after cheese, the milk product consisting in large part of those proteins.
And 'kase' is not a Germanic root. Fromage descends from the Latin word for "shape". 'kase' descends from the Latin word for "cheese".
> There are two conclusions here, one being that the dictionary translation of words does not capture somewhat-subtle but sometimes important distinctions between words.
This isn't right either. Tin soldiers must be cast, but they are obviously not cheese, and therefore they are also not fromage. The etymology of the word tells you nothing about its meaning.
(The conclusion is fine, but drawing it from this evidence is not -- if you translate French fromage as "cheese", you're not missing any subtle distinctions. It means cheese.)
The relation between 'kase' and casein is very fair; cheese production obviously predates protein chemistry. I guess what I was trying to say was that the words are related, but if 'kase' derives from Latin for 'cheese', the rabbit hole continues. Why does the French word derive from shape, if the Romans already had a word for cheese? And what did their definition of cheese include?
This is not a question that it's possible to answer. Languages change.
Why is the modern English term dog, a word of no known origin, instead of the native (still extant, but not really alive) term hound?
> Do you have references for the last of your claims? I thought I did a reasonably exhaustive search for a layperson, but the sources I found could certainly be wrong.
Assuming you're referring to the claim that the English word "cheese" (and the similar terms in other Germanic languages) is derived from an ancient borrowing of the Latin word caseus, meaning "cheese", I was not able to find any source that didn't confirm it. Wiktionary will tell you this. etymonline will tell you this. The OED will also tell you this:
> Forms: 1 cese, cyse, 2 cease, cæse, 5 schese, 6 chease, cheise, chiese, ches, 2–6 chese, 4, 6– cheese. [OE. (Anglian) cése, (WSax.) *cíese, cýse (with i- umlaut from céasi, cǽsi) = OHG. châsi (MHG. kæse, Ger. käse), OLG. kâsi, kêsi (MDu. kâse, Du. kaas):—WGer. *kâsi, ad. L. cāse-us cheese (bef. 5th c.).]
Where were you checking that didn't say this?
If you want a reference to the fact that the Latin word caseus means "cheese", try here: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
I'm only familiar due to 'cacio a pepe'.
Good point. I have yet to see a dictionary that also provides delineation with similar-but-different words and describes the differences.
That'd be very useful for language learners, as colloquial use often eschews definition in favor of socially common convention. I.e. "That word does mean that, but you would never use it in that way"
Authentic, Genuine. The prevailing sense of authentic is authoritative, trustworthy, with the implication of accordance with fact; as "confirmed both by legend and authentic record" (Froude); "assurances more or less authentic" (Wordsworth); an authentic portrait. The prevailing sense of Genuine is native, real, true (see Real), often with the implication of descent from, or correspondence to, an original source or stock; as, a genuine merino, genuine piety; "true simplicity and genuine pathos" (Wordsworth); cf (colloq.) "the genuine article" with "the real thing." Both terms are used - genuine more frequently than authentic - as opposed to spurious, counterfeit, apocryphal; as "Let them contrast their own fantastical personages ... with the authentic rustics of Burns" (Jeffrey); "What is genuine knowledge and what is its counterfeit" (J.H. Newman). The 18th century distinction between the two terms, as applied to documents - "A genuine book is that which was written by the person whose name it bears as the author of it; an authentic book is that which relates matters of fact as they really happened" (Bp. Watson) - while still often observed, is becoming obliterated in present usage; as "The criticism which thus so freely diminishes the numer of his [Giorgione's] authentic works" (W. Pater); "Some collectors frankly take the ground that they buy what pleases them, and that age and authenticity are minor considerations" (The Nation). See Real, Correct.
On the whole, Wikipedia et al. are improvements in comprehensiveness and timeliness, but god damn do the gems of prior methods still shine brightly.
Here's one more entry, on synonyms of Intention:
Intention, Intent, Purpose, Design, Aim, Object, End are here compared in their general senses; for technical definitions, see defs. Intention, which often suggests little more than what one means or proposes to do, implies less settled determination than Purpose, less definite plan or prearrangment than Design, which frequently adds the implication of crafty or artful scheming; as "She had not had an intention or a thought of going home, until she had announced it to him as a settled design" (Dickens); his intentions are good; cf. to declare one's intentions; "My purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die" (Tennyson); "I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a man hurrying along - to what? The creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it" (Keats); "envious commands, invented design to keep them low" (Milton); "Should he find me here, [he] would discover my name, and perhaps my designs, to the rest of the family" (Goldsmith); cf. "designing lovers" (id.). Intent is chiefly legal or poetical; as, intent to deceive, kill; "the power of a sublime intent" (Shelley). Aim emphasizes directness of purpose, Object that on which activities are focused, End that towards which they tend as their consequence or final cause; as, "to [his trust] keeps faithful with a singleness of aim" (Wordsworth); "her steadiness and courage in the pursuit of her aims" (J.R. Green); "Yet in the task of luxury of freedom I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit, which gave a value to every book, and an object to every inquiry" (Gibbon); the object of education, a man without an object in life; "I see in part that all, as in some piece of art, is toil cooperant to an end" (Tennyson); "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever" (Westminster Catechism). See Cause, Effect, Plan, Voluntary.
You may also be interested in Garner's Modern American Usage. David Foster Wallace, in reviewing this book for Harper's, wrote "He's both a lawyer and a lexicographer (which seems a bit like being both a narcotics dealer and a DEA agent)".
If I kick my foot on a rock, I may say something out loud about hurting my leg. That doesn't sound right to native speaker.
See e.g. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheese
Interestingly, the pronounciation guide for origin of ost is /ˈjus.tɑz/ which seems a lot like the Finnish word for cheese, "juusto".
How are they different?
I think it is more about who introduced these words. Etymology is fascinating.
Indeed. Spanish is my native language but I learned sailing in the US so my nautical vocabulary is all in English. I feel completely illiterate on a Spanish speaking boat.
This is unlike for a doctor, where it's obvious which side is which: you can see the patient.
This isn’t always true and it’s not always obvious.
For example with imaging - axial slices of the patient through symmetrical structures. The brain, lower abdo, a single leg or arm etc, etc. There are conventions in image display for a reason - it is not obvious.
For axial slices, as an observer, you are positioned as though at the foot of the patient’s bed. Your right is the patients left.
Don't make assumptions, codify it.
The orientation is screwed up and images should almost never be displayed like this.
If the patient’s organs are in non-standard locations (situs inversus, dextrocardia etc), something very bad will happen when orientations are messed with. Use standard orientations and label the images.
Your point was well made.
I'd also assume it would be simple to spot just because the image is always took from the same direction so the narrow part points out to front/back of the patient
Greek dexios and aristeros ... well dexter come from dexios", as does the chemical suffix -dextrin. Aristeros* is a euphemism, it means something like "best" (I wonder if that's the origin of 'put your best foot forward') ... I'm told that left-sided things were unlucky to the Greek speaking peoples and Greek language apparently compensated by describing that position positively.
It's an interestingly deep rabbit hole in language etymology just how much "left" gets besmirched and "right" gets positive connotations. (The fact that "right" is also a synonym in English for "correct" being another bit of evidence.)
Often not true. In any sort of imaging it can be ambiguous what way the patient is facing
“Driver side rear door” or “passenger side rear door” are pretty common, at least in the US and UK, where they mean the opposite.
“Nearside“ (passenger side nearest curb in a right-hand drive vehicle driving on the left) and “offside” (driver side furthest from curb) are also used in the UK.
I've the vaguest recollection that sailing/steam boats used to say which side to move the wheel towards to steer; that begging opposite of the way the boat will go??
E.g. you don't call it the front/back door, you call it the bonnet/boot (or maybe hood/trunk depending where you're from) though that probably is stretching the definition of a door a little bit... but then you also have nearside and offside for passengers/drivers side, though that's probably a bit more of a technical term.
It is, but then so is the stupid "3-door" / "5-door" / etc. car classification, which is really 2-door / 4-door / etc. with the trunk being counted as additional door for some reason.
I was recently involved in a case where a patient decided that their left should be called the right side during a phone consultation as that would help their doctor.
Good times.
Either that or my recent C excursions have me thinking in buffer overruns and index errors.
That's before even getting into the assumption of face to face orientation over a phone... is that in virtual terms, or in terms of absolute orientation, I hope they took into consideration the curvature of the Earth.
When I first moved to Hong Kong, I kept making eye contact with passengers instead of drivers when crossing the road on foot.
In New Zealand (my first experience driving on the left), I turned on my wipers (on a sunny day) the first couple of times entering a roundabout (the turn signal is on the other side of the steering wheel). Also, I couldn't resist the urge to glance over my left shoulder for oncoming traffic in my blind spot when making left-hand turns, despite the fact that traffic approaching me from there would need to be driving the wrong way down the road.
Thank goodness that the manual shift pattern and pedal layouts are kept the same between left-hand and right-hand drive models. Driving in South Africa could have been a disaster had the shift pattern been reversed.
Really though, just use _your_ left and right as most people do, because as has been mentioned, the standard is for doctors to refer to and visualise left and right from the patients perspective - so every time you do something different they have to transform, translate or clarify which increases chance of mistakes.
When having my arm x-rayed years ago they places a small pad with an embedded metal "L" to indicate that it was my left arm. But if you place the L backwards, then they will think the image has been reversed, which just makes everything more complicated. So the L-pad needed "this side up" label.
X-rays are effectively shadows and things further from the X-ray plate get more magnified. Large structures like the chest benefit from being done a certain way, like having the heart near the plate. That way it’s less magnified.
PA or AP is often a thing you see on the corner of films, indicating the technique.
The film also used to be processed in a film processor, and it was very easy to accidentally flip. This is another reason we have conventions.
On a big ship, like an aircraft carrier or cruiser, you can qite easily lose track of which direction is the prow (front). Many carrier crew rarely go up on deck. And if the ship happens to be sailing astern, left and right become ambiguous.
If you don't where the prow is, how do you know where starboard is? I guess if the sailing direction is backwards, it might be confusing if you say "to your left", but if you say "left side", it should still be clear I think, maybe not.
Always annoying that it could be clearer and more stable and shorter to use the driver’s perspective with “Driver left/right” to be specific and then would be the same sides on all cars moving or parked in any orientation in all countries.
[1] not valid if you turn around and park backwards!
In each the UK, Ireland, and the United States, the inside lane is the leftmost lane. However, due to driving on the opposite sides of the road, this means that while the inside lane in the US is closest to the central median, in the UK & Ireland, the inside lane is closet to the curb.
Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/inside-l...
https://www.naturalnavigator.com/news/2010/09/guugu-yimithir...
What if the patient lies on his back vs on his stomach? Theoretically this should then revert left and right in addition to how the doctors are facing the patient, from their point of view.
On stage, they are "côté cour" and "côté jardin" because the "Comédie-Française" theatre during the 1770 was in the Tuileries palace, and the stage was oriented with the Louvre courtyard on its right, and the Tuileries garden on its left.
Probably a non-trivial number of people were hurt or killed because of that linguistic similarity; we see the same with air traffic control and pilots using ambiguous language.
The word ‘back’ in German meaning ‘back’ in English doesn’t even exist. Only in this one loanword from Low German.
Only today I looked up this word, I never knew or understood that Backbord is literally backboard.
That is the most french explanation possible.
Then there's space, where it gets even more fun, as the relevant frames - the ship, the orbit (or the "centre of gravity" of everything pulling on you) - are completely independent. That is, your orientation doesn't matter for the travel direction. Now, not only "right" and "left" are ambiguous - but also "up", "down", "forward" and "backward".
When in orbit, you have "prograde" and "retrograde" to refer to the velocity vector's direction and its opposite; if we dub that "forward" and "backward", then "radial" and "antiradial" are "down" and "up" (i.e. towards / away from the center of orbited body), and then "normal", "antinormal" for "left" and "right", which you can get from the cross product of "forward" and "up".
There's windward (towards/upwind) and leeward (away/downwind).
Are there left and right too?
But points of sail don't have any handedness, correct? I.e. they're mirrored on both sides of the wind.
As mentioned in another comment, tacking (with its active directionality) is probably the closest to handed-terminology.
The right-of-way rules in sailboat racing depend on who is on 'port tack' or 'starboard tack' (ie, they differentiate those mirrored halves). There's nothing physically special, though.
Strokeside is always port, even if in that particular boat stroke's oar is actually on the starboard side- and even in a sculling boat!
The space shuttle normally orbited with it's payload bay, opposite of the landing gear facing Earth. The payload bay was +z direction. From the layperson's point of view, the shuttle orbited upside down, but from an aerospace engineer's point of view it orbited right side up and landed upside down.
I used to work satellite navigation for NOAA. For the GOES sats we often used Intrack (Prograde/Retrograde), Crosstrack (Normal/Anti-normal), and Radial (Towards planet/away from). I don't think anyone really referred to any directions as "plus x" or "minus y"
Actually I work on rovers and it's a perennial debate whether to follow spacecraft convention (+z is down) or automotive convention (+z is up). Then mechanical engineers will usually follow what is intuitive on the screen (+z is forward). This is because computer graphics convention is +z facing out of the screen.
We used to tilt the spacecraft when doing inclination burns so that we could get a little bit of intrack delta-v to even out our orbit. I always thought that was delightfully janky.
That wasn't a choice. The doors had to remain open and pointing away from the earth so that the radiators could properly dissipate heat. It also, in theory, kept the most important thermal tiles pointing away from incoming space rocks.
It's the opposite. The orbiter usually kept it doors pointed toward Earth and the "bottom" tiles pointed away from Earth, and orbited with its engines pointed prograde. (Upside-down and backward relative to the atmospheric flight people are familiar with)
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/12321/why-did-the-...
"Skier's left/right" for snow skiing. Ambiguity arises when looking uphill or downhill.
When riding on a float in Mardi Gras in New Orleans. You might be on the "driver's side" or "passenger's side". You could also be on the neutral ground side (left) or the other side. Or the rider could be on the "lake side" (left) or the river side (right). Parades run South to North and the Mississippi River would be on the rider's right and Lake Pontchartrain on the left.
Aviation uses a clock face (traffic is at your 2'oclock, northbound) to reference traffic at the pilot's right / front.
But what about “snowboarder’s left”… sounds a lot like “starboard’s left” at which everybody on the fake ski slope on the cruise ship gets incredibly confused? We have to drive out all ambiguity here, or people are doing to die.
In an effort to avoid ambiguity, I always talk to my doctor in terms of "driver's side" and "passenger side" - thus adopting the maritime approach, but in more common terms.
For example, if you are standing and looking at a mountain, it’s easier to say “just to the climbers left of that peak” because it’s on the left from your perspective, likewise when descending it best to say “stay to the skiers left of the rock”.
There’s also lots of times it’s good to mix and match, like if you are looking at and discussing a mountain from afar and planning on skiing down it later, you might keep the conversation from a skiers perspective.
(Same story, mutadis mutandis, for "north bank" and "south bank" of generally east/west-flowing rivers.)
I don’t know so much about the theatre world, I’m a professional dancer, but at least the dance scene is increasingly international, switching fluently between English or German depending on the people present; some people learned the English/international convention, some - especially older - directors know mainly the German convention, some people are not aware that there are different conventions in English and German and the result is complete chaos.
The concept of left and right hands was not very commonly used historically. It wasn't important to most people. During the English Civil War many recruits didn't know which hand or foot was left or right. During marching training instructors used to stick some hay in one boot and straw in the other for each recruit and call out "Hay, Straw, Hay, Straw".
The opposite of that, rarely used but still out there, is house left/house right.
A trick that helped me remember is that "LEFT", "PORT", and "RED" are all the shorter words and "RIGHT", "STARBOARD", and "GREEN" are the longer words in the respective pairs.
FWIW.
She has some kind of right/left dyslexia. When she's driving and I'm giving directions I have to tell her "short turn" or "long turn". Long turn being left, longer because it's across a lane, right turns are shorter.
But if someone told her that left is shorter than right for remembering purposes, it would probably mess her up more when following driving directions.
It drives me insane as I always subconsciously interpret it as a form of lazyness, your framing of it as a form od dyslexia may finally allow me to be less bothered by it!
So I cut across two lanes, avoided several oncoming motorists and made a hasty but decent emergency right turn into the parking lot.
She looked disgusted and said "Why did you do that? The place is RIGHT over there" and pointed to an area on the other side of the street on the left of where I'd been. "Why didn't you turn left RIGHT THERE WHEN I TOLD YOU TO!".
Ah, I loved that girl (platonicly). She hit me with a shoe one time, but I still feel bad for who she married.
I "know" where my right arm is and I can feel it instinctively (as a right handed person, it's my main, default arm). But apparently my brain cannot map those words to directions in the outside world until it establishes a positional relation to my own body. I used to be ridiculed as a child for not knowing left from right until I developed the twitching trick.
He would say to people with such problem "turn in the next left blue" every time.
So when they got to their test and and the tester will say to them "turn in the next right" their brain will add a "red" and they will look it up in the car and find it on the right beam.
He claimed it usually solved the issue.
Are you located in the US?
I moved from the mid-west to NYC and learned a fun regional language difference about waiting with others: Those from the NYC area say that they are "standing on line" whereas I had grown up saying "standing in line."
That little in vs. on sounds so different!
I've used mostly word by word translation from Hebrew as I didn't intuitively found "right" translation that will convey the same idea.
Now I live in Japan and when I speak Japanese I don't have the same problem at all. The brain (or at least my brain,) is a weird.
(also righty tighty, lefty loosey)
For sailors, we learn "red-right-returning," which means to keep the red aids to navigation on the right (starboard) side when returning to port. Which is great, except when it doesn't apply--parts of Europe, Australia, a lot of Asia.
You'd think this would be a solved problem by now, but nope.
If you got halfway through a crossing and they announced there's a problem at the destination (broken thruster, docks on fire, dragons, docks on fire because of dragons), you would have to turn the ship around 180º and go back to your origin with the same bow that you started the trip with so everyone could disembark. The only time you'd switch ship orientation mid-trip is if something broke such that one end of the ship was navigable and the other was not. At which point you'd either have to dock backward (maybe with a tug) or everyone would have to back off the ship.
The direction might not matter, but consistency does.
The lighting scheme on ships indicates the starboard side with a green light and the port side with a red light. This allows ships to figure out which way another ship is heading - especially at night. If you can see the red light on the left and green on the right while facing the other ship it’s going away from you, if it’s reversed then it’s coming towards you. If you can only see green it’s going to your right, to your left if you can see red.
Retaining that property is important for navigation, so starboard and port have to swap sides.
You’ll basically only see boats going in reverse in harbors or exceptional circumstances. In harbors, speeds are generally low and extra caution is required of all ships. For exceptional circumstances, you’ll have special ways of communicating this - specific lighting patterns, flags, horns to warn others.
I suspect they just don't use this terminology, unless it's to communicate with other vessels, and then it's presumably based on movement direction like you say.
"Ten sequential rivets debonded on aft starboard #273 spar" would then be a writeup.
Funny -- I've ridden the ferries a lot and never really thought about it.
1. https://www.sailnet.com/threads/double-ended-ferries-which-e...
The Torpoint ferry in Plymouth (Devon, UK) is on chains, so front and back, bow and stern etc is moot. I think we can simply redefine that sort of ferry as a fish and avoid any snags. That strategy seems to work for astronomy when trying to wrangle planet/dwarf planet/lump of stuff n that.
(EDIT: speling)
Back in the day, in England at least, otters were classified as fish too for the purpose of allowable nosh on a Friday for your discerning Catholic. Nowadays we munch on depleted cod stocks and chips. Yum!
How on earth that became a thing in a country where it is impossible to get around 70 miles away from the sea beggars belief. There are also rather a lot of rivers hereabouts but we don't generally munch on freshwater fish here either - WTF?
When I captain a boat it is more important for me to communicate things unequivocally. I need to be able to specify what I want to happen, precisely. The crew does not really need to concern themselves with the direction the boat is moving or what is the bigger plan. They just get orders to do specific tasks. Only I (or whoever is responsible for the boat at the moment) really need to understand the context of those tasks although ideally the crew would also understand why they are doing things so that they can anticipate further orders or signal when I make a mistake.
Why this is important is because the plan may sometimes change and then my job is to put a new set of orders and I can't really start by explaining what the new changed plan is or getting any consent.
I was never in a situation like that, but if I was captaining a boat that can change directions, I would still keep stable naming that does not change when the boat stops or changes directions.
I'm curious on other items that are defined in this way. Is does make sense that broad rules are lifted for obvious reasons. Is why I can name a few things where screw threading is reversed from what we typically use.
The differentiation between rudder and engine is crucial. The Conning Officer, who gives orders to the helm at the direction of the Officer of the Deck, will call rudder orders as "left standard rudder" or "right full rudder".
Engine orders will be given in terms of "all engines ahead 1/3", "back 1/3" or "port engine ahead 1/3, starboard engine back 1/3" (to put a clockwise twist on when maneuvering). Frequently when on a great circle voyage, one may have the port shaft making turns for, e.g. 13kts, and the starboard shaft just trailing in the water, for fuel efficiency.
The crucial point here is that these order terms are like strong data types in code. We do not mix them. In a stressful situation, e.g. the Straits of Malacca, the last thing anyone needs is entropy from a terminology mix-up. Lives are literally at stake.
Bonus point: the port/starboard nomenclature is also applies to spatial locations off of the centerline. Compartments go, level, frame (bow to stern numbering), centerline position. e.g.
6 4 2 0 1 3 5
Thus, as a young lad at the end of the Cold War, working on Aegis in CG-57, my computer room was O1-138-0-C.
The centerline numbering is in accordance with PESO: Port: Even, Starboard: Odd.
To this day, I set up my cel phone headset IAW PESO, based upon the day of the month. Go, Navy.
Sailing, Flight, Surgery; All of these require people to work together, in scenarios where a misinterpreted instruction can cost lives.
The Tenerife Airport Disaster, still the deadliest aviation accident was caused by bad communication procedures. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Comm...
And any time there's a multi-word phrase like that that gets used a lot over many years, it gets shortened.
Starboard => Means "steering side of the boat" (b/c the oar was on the right side due to sailors mostly being right handed)
Port => The side that faces the port when docked
“Vessels with bilateral symmetry have left and right halves which are mirror images of each other. One asymmetric feature is where access to a boat, ship, or aircraft is at the side, it is usually only on the port side (hence the name)”
In German starboard is steuerbord, steuern = to steer. No shifting over the centuries.
However, port is still backbord. I am not familiar with Northern dialects (where they have a coast), back does not tell me anything. Maybe packen = to pack/load)??? Interestingly enough the English argument that the 2 words should not be too similar has not been applied. Maybe because there are already 3 vs. 2 syllables? Whereas English had 2 and 2 so they changed to 2 vs. 1 to make it make obvious what was said even in a big storm?
"raise you left hand. no, your other left!"
port
left
red
starboard
right
greenhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULvLeK9O7fY
Maybe because I'm from a landlocked country, but this article didn't help me understand the why.
- There's an incoming boat !
- From where ?
- From the left !
Is it the left of the sailor, or is it the left of the vessel ?
So it’s not actually achieving anything. You could just say left always refers to the ship’s left.
If you use left and right for the ship, you wouldn't be able to use personal left and right without risking ambiguity. You'd just be trading one convenience for the other.
What you achieve is a new set of coordinates relative to the vessel. You are going north, sitting on the port, with a glass of wine in your right hand, instead of going up and sitting on the left.
- Turn it left, no, I mean the ship’s left, not my left!
It's probably a similar reason people talk about the "driver's side" and "passenger's side" of a car instead of the left and right sides.
So they could just say something like "ship left" and "ship right" that are always referenced to the bow of the ship, and that would work almost as well, but having special terms just removes any possibility for confusion.
The concept of left and right hands was not commonly used historically. During the English Civil War many recruits didn't know which hand or foot was left or right. During marching training instructors used to stick some hay in one boot and straw in the other for each recruit and call out "Hay, Straw, Hay, Straw".
I say it's a brain teaser only because this sounds highly improbable at first. Forwards and backwards can be described, and even up/down if we assume basic fundamental rules remain the same. Yet left and right? It seems impossible for it to be impossible.
One approach would be: you're moving along a straight line, perpendicular to a large body that attracts you through gravity.
Now "down" is towards the gravity, "up" is the opposite direction, and "left" and "right" are perpendicular, but which one is left and right, if you cannot rely on handedness?
BTW, If you really must explain it without just saying it is arbitrary, you can talk about clockwise vs. counterclockwise... which came from sundials, which came from the direction our shadows move as the sun moves. In a similar vein, Left goes against the shadows, Right follows the shadows.
> Suppose, after lots of communication you finally can go into space and meet your alien counterpart. If, as you approach one another, the alien extends its left hand to shake, watch out! He’s made of antimatter!
because even the physics of weak decays of will invert in an antimatter universe.
[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/gala...
I got the quote slightly differently from what is recorded on the caltech sight, the one they have is
> So if our Martian is made of antimatter and we give him instructions to make this “right” handed model like us, it will, of course, come out the other way around. What would happen when, after much conversation back and forth, we each have taught the other to make space ships and we meet halfway in empty space? We have instructed each other on our traditions, and so forth, and the two of us come rushing out to shake hands. Well, if he puts out his left hand, watch out!
On one of our products (that has symmetric speakers, sensors and lights) we use "proper left" and "proper right" in reference material. The markings are also molded on the chassis. It makes communicating with technicians in the field so much easier.
I get why there are better terms to use when talking about others. At least, I think I do. But it feels like there is more history to these terms than just "needs to be fixed."
People very often describe things with just _left_ or just _right_. They don't say things like when I'm sitting in the car the door to my left is hard to open. They just say the left door is broken even when both them and the mechanic are facing the car head on.
By having people use an unambiguous vocabulary it makes up for people not thinking about how their statements will be interpreted. If the deckhands were genius's they're be charting the course not heaving rope.
Edit: I'll note that it is amusing to compare to cars. It seems the etymology of the terms is literally "driver side".
It is certainly clear if one would say "left facing stern" or "left facing aft", but that's a mouthful when you can just shorten it (and the reference facing direction is not relevant). Bonus points if the shortened version can't be mistaken for another direction...
BTW, I'm 100% down for introducing dedicated words for "my left", "your left" etc vs just "on the left". It would certainly save me a bit of time when my family asks me to look for something and they flip between the two meanings in the same sentence.
I am still on board with dedicated terms.
It's intriguing to say the least.
Now look at the front of the engine (FRONT IS FRONT) and you’ll see…
[0] https://olsensvw.net/shop/engine/idiot-book-how-to-keep-your...
But if you train people to use specifically-invented unambiguous terms that can’t be screwed up, their brains will reach for those words when they’re in trouble.
It might be hard to grok the need for this if you’ve never been in a tight spot while sailing or operating a watercraft with a crew - but having this distinction has probably saved thousands of bad incidents from happening.
The ferry is actually a very odd boat in this, btw. As I am not clear that starboard/port are fixed. The boat literally goes in both directions, such that I'm assuming I don't have to know which is the "front" of it irrespective of the direction it is currently traveling.
I get your point, that things can be difficult. And I appreciate having jargon that is specific for an attempt to make things clearer. I just find this as the sole explanation kind of unsatisfactory. Seeing the history of the terms makes a lot more sense.
Edit: I found more discussion on this by searching for "double ended" boats. Port/starboard do indeed change depending on the direction of travel from all results I've found.
To be fair, they may not be 100% symmetrical. I am not measuring. They are close enough that I can't imagine it would be a good use of the terms. (That is, when the VAST majority of the time the bow is the front of the boat, having a few bigger boats where I have to inspect it to know which is bow and stern would be a bad idea.)
The car decks and the sundeck appear to be mostly symmetric other than labelling, and maybe elevator placement? The machinery under the car decks is likely somewhat assymetric too, but I've never gotten to go down below.
From what I understand, on ferries (and similar "two-sided" working boats), port and starboard get switched around when the boat changes direction of travel, usually when docked (and its navigation lights also turn from green to red and vice-versa).
I think it's just historical.
You hear a cry “man overboard on the left!”
Where is the overboard person? Are they to your left, the ships left, or the left of the person shouting?
If the cry is instead “man overboard on the port side!” there is no question.
This is about as worrisome as "you are the fire department, and you are told you need to rescue some people on the 14th floor. Quick, does that mean you go up 13 flights of stairs, or 11?" Realistically, you aren't getting it right on spur of the moment decision making.
I think starboard and port make more sense here because they only describe parts of the ship, so the meaning of the terms is completely unambiguous.
A crew (any kind of crew) requires exceedingly clear communication. "Ship left" and "ship right" could work, but what if the environment is noisy and you're not sure if the first word was "ship" or something else? Domain-specific, unique terms are fantastic tools for crews.
Speaking as somebody who sails occasionally, to me "left" and "port" are just very different concepts. It's sort of like driver's side and passenger's side of the car, but more intense. So I think the desire to use "left" mainly comes from people who don't spend much time on ships, an audience, not particularly important to sailors. Sort of like how non-programmers might struggle with some of our technical terms, but we'd never change.
This is why in the days of processed x-ray films, TV shows would more commonly hang a chest x-ray incorrectly[1], with the (patient's) "left" label on the left instead of the right. It's less common now that the example imaging is digital.
[1] https://screenrant.com/scrubs-xray-gag-joke-deeper-meaning/
Ironically enough, port and starboard markers which are the red and green buoys you see near to ports (yes!) need to be considered in reverse when going out. The green ones are called starboard markers and if you are in a big enough vessel, you should keep them off your starboard (right) side when approaching a port from the open seas. On the way out from port to the open seas you should keep the red ones on your right instead. If you don't you will hit the seabed and sink.
Once you have got the hang of p/s buoys, you just need to get to grips with cardinal markers and a few other things and the way you drive on the sea will start to make sense. Even Brits drive on the right on the seas!
There is a general rule that "power gives way to sail". That's fine for vessels of similar size. However I have seen 30' yachts on the Baltic try to persuade 100,000+ tonne tankers of this and not really getting the fact that inertia means that the big lump can't really turn in any meaningful way - they sort of orbit!
Overtaking vessel keeps clear. On odd numbered years when Mars is in Saturn on a Friday you should dance with a Nun for three minutes at midnight every 70 days, unless it's Lent or you are a Nun in which case you should dance with an otter. There are a few more rules but that is largely it. Maritime isn't too complicated but do remember that the road has a habit of jumping 30' or more upwards or down simply for a laugh.
Just to keep things fun, that's the european convention. In the US it's "red right returning", the exact opposite.
"But whether they are green to port and red to starboard or the opposite depends entirely upon what region of the world you are navigating. The IALA established two regions: Region A and Region B.
Region A consists of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Africa and most of Asia. When entering a harbor in this region, marks to port are red and marks to starboard are green.
Region B consists of North America, Central America and South America, plus the Philippines, Japan and Korea. When entering a harbor in this region, marks to port are green and marks to starboard are red (red, right, return!)."
I had no idea but I do now!
Reminds me a similar bit about some dimension of the space shuttle being limited by the width of a horse's ass [0].
[0] https://dwanethomas.com/roman-chariots-and-the-space-shuttle...
When boats are on opposite tacks, a port-tack boat shall keep clear of a starboard-tack boat. Rule 10.
A boat is on the tack, starboard or port, corresponding to her windward side. RRS Definitions.And of course power boats must give way to sailing vessels.
(Yes, I know colregs is a bit more nuanced than that, but I think this is a decent approximation)
We do use different words for the direction of the ship facing towards or away from the wind though.
Not sure if the ancients used other words though. We managed to avoid confusion for a few hundred years though.
Ships began using centre-mounted, bladed rudders so that they could be more easily docked at the Hanseatic League port of Ipswich in England.
It seems obvious to put a rudder at the centre of a boat now but prior to this development rudders were mounted on the starboard (steering) side. That's where a steering oar would naturally enter the water when the man holding is standing on the centre line of the boat. They just copied that position when they first added bladed rudders.
Specifically they moved the rudder to the centre so that they could more easily turn around in the Orwell[1] estuary. Something to do with Ipswich's port being on the opposite side of the river to most other ports in the region.
The earliest known depiction of a centre-mounted, bladed rudder is on an 11th century seal of the town now in the Royal Greenwich Museum[2].
To this day the town's crest features three centre mounted rudders and a lion[3].
It's a fun story but do take it with pinch of salt as I can't verify it. :)
-
0. On a history tour by an old chap with an impenetrable Suffolk accent. Not sure if that counts as a good source of truth but it was certainly entertaining.
1. Another fun bit of trivia, that's the river that George Orwell named himself after.
2. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-64185
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipswich#/media/File:Coat_of_Ar...
It's probably for the best that they've been detached from their original meanings.
Stjόrn means stern, so the back of the boat. I'm guess borði refers to the rudder itself, meaning plank.
From what I gather the OP story is bunk. It's easy to verify.
Everything has a name and none of the names coincide with non-nautical experience.
For instance, a “rope” on a sailboat refers to the metal part of a line usually used to the main sail. What non-sailors would call a rope, sailors call a line.
There’s a working vocabulary of 50-100 such terms and then hundreds more when you start talking about very specific pieces of equipment.
Is it left as in I’m looking at the engine or left as if I was sitting in the car? I think it’s the latter, but I always forget.
Can’t use driver’s/passenger’s side for orientation either.
They will yell “starboard!” at you, rather than “left” or “right”. Easier that way.
Port = LEFT (4 letters in each word, same vowel/consonant placement)
Port = Red as in Port Wine
Therefore, navigation lights: Red = Port = Left
It stuck.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/69030/why-does-t...
https://emmacruises.com/poop-decks-what-are-they-and-why-are...
That's why.
"steer" as in steer manure?
Left/right might mean looking from the mountain top, or from the bottom as on maps.
From steuern, much closer phonetically to stéor, with the meaning of to steer, to direct, to control
Now you'll always remember that port is the left side.
Last time I read about this, I think some physicist said something about the rotation of elementary particles and radiation stuff that are way over my head.
Don't worry, I am not an atom-ist or a chiral-ist. All sides are equal! (except the ambidextrous master race :D )
I suspect it's different, in that I expect the reason for people is something like "handedness makes people better at violence". Whereas I suspect chirality is more like driving on the right/left side of the road. Which one you pick doesn't matter, but picking is less chaotic than not picking.
Not all enzymes are stereospecific though. Some of them can take any configuration of a chemical and convert them to other type of isomer. But these are rare and usually an exception, not the norm. Still, it makes it harder to figure out why chirality is so important in life and not so much in some other parts of life.
Maybe your explanation about handedness makes sense. But then it would fail at explaining ambidextrous people since they are definitely better and yet still so rare. Life is really difficult to figure out.
Maybe I'm an outlier, but your notion that being ambidextrous is better is a huge assumption. Having a dominant side could have the same sort of benefit that specialization usually does: better for the cases that really matter, worse for the cases that are less important.
Having the opposite handedness of most other people (i.e. being left-handed) is an advantage in a fight. That's because righties are used to fight against other righties because most people are righties, lefties are also used to fight against other righties. It means that when a lefty fights a righty, the lefty is in a familiar situation while the righty is not, giving the lefty an advantage. And indeed, in many sports where you have an opponent, at high level, there is a higher than normal proportion of lefties.
On the other hand (pun not intended), having the same handedness as most other people (i.e. being right-handed) is an avantage for cooperation. For example, to righties can easily share a tool made for righties, but it will be awkward for a lefty.
So there are two opposing forces here: cooperation tends to make people of all the same handedness, while competition pushes for a 50/50 distribution. We are at about 90/10, suggesting that the cooperation aspect is more important but not absolutely so.
That dominant side is the right side is probably just due to random chance. That it doesn't differ between population groups suggest that it happened before humans spread around the globe, possibly before humans were human.
Interesting though the Americans swapped the colours guiding you in a channel but the names have never been flipped.
I guess for ships there is no variation between countries? Starboard is presumably where the wheel was so everyone must have left it on the right side?
I'd reverse it for postal trucks, after all, or cars imported from England and such.
It's maybe better than "driver" and "passenger side" because it still makes sense when you're driving a car with different "handedness" to your current road network.
Not the wheel, but (as this article also says) the steering oar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_oar:
“The steering oar or steering board is an over-sized oar or board, to control the direction of a ship or other watercraft prior to the invention of the rudder.“
Things that are driver-side in the U.S. are also driver-side in England, because the layout is designed around the position of the driver.
"Starboard" comes from Old English "steor bord", which meant "steering side of the boat" back in the days when a steering oar was used to steer the boat. Most sailors were right-handed so this was almost always the right side. It was easier to dock with the other side of the boat facing the port, so the left side became "larboard" and then simply "port." English is the international nautical language owing to its centuries of dominance of the oceans, followed by the U.S. dominance of global politics, so the English terms became the standard nautical terms. (Note: technically the international nautical language is "Seaspeak," which is a special dialect of English created specifically for nautical use.)
At this point I was still limited to driving in empty 1000 space parking lots and was getting frustrated. One day I realized, I could ask my driving companion-turned-instructor "hey when you say left and right, can you just say passenger-side or driver-side?" After a few iterations at this, it all clicked. My new-driver brain could do absolute positioning consistently with minimal effort, instead of having to calculate relative positioning each time and getting frazzled.
your left hand is still your left hand, even if it's on the starboard side of the boat. you always need some additional disambiguation to specify that you're talking about the boat. i've never sailed a boat with slavic people, but i'm guessing they use a phrase like "boat left" and "boat right", not just "left" or "right".
also, i've never heard anybody describe a riverbank as "left" or "right". riverbanks would be described by their cardinal direction, like the "east bank" or the "south bank"
A big part of the training material for boating license is about learning things that people are not using in practice, which makes less time / mental power to learn what is really important to survive and avoid crash (what's really important).
It requires a process of learning, and that is intentional.
For example, consider spelling a word. The briefest approach is to say the names of letters. But these are similar, often differing only in one phoneme. E.g., P and B differentiating sounds are both bilabial plosives, differing only in whether they are voiced. But people for whom clarity is important will use something like the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. There, you'd say "papa" and "bravo". [1] It is much less brief, but much more clear.
Plus, that's not how brains work. Using a word for different things that change depending on context is like reusing a variable, with a compiler that randomizes global and local scope. In aviation they watch out for "Regression to prior learning", in the kitchen I watch out for putting something in the microwave instead of the fridge because the action is similar.
If you ask me which way is left, I'll have to stop and think not only about what left and right even mean, probably looking at my hand to see what makes the L shape, but I'll have to wonder who's left you're referring to, in addition to performing a mental rotation, an extremely error prone operation that I basically avoid at all costs, if my heading is not the same as the ships.
Any small about of simplification or added reliability there is a good thing.
Especially in historical context. Assuming the port and starboard were not mostly symmetric and had features specific to docking and steering, you're actually referring to something specific, not an abstract direction.
These conventions are designed for the 95%, not the 5% or 75% or whatever who can instantly tell which way is left relative to any given orientation without any effort.
A familiar experience... I have to catch myself when I start to throw the spoon into the bin and the teabag into the dishwasher!
These are the most common reason of fatalities:
- Not wearing a lifejacket or PFD.
- Falling overboard.
- Capsizing, swamping, sinking, or running aground.
- Being involved in a collision.
- Operating a pleasure craft while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The goal of the license should be helping these people, not experienced ones, who anyways have more advanced license, not just the basic ones.
You’re suggesting that people avoid using port and starboard on a boat because they should be focused on learning how to not fall overboard?
Terms like “port” and “starboard” are particularly important when someone falls overboard. The last thing you want to do is tell someone to grab the man overboard “on the right side” and have them go to the wrong side of the boat in a crucial moment. This is why these things exist. We have been sailing for hundreds of years and are very good at it.
Despite this, your entire argument is a bit ridiculous. It is not zero sum- port and starboard do not take up “brain space” that causes you to forget a life jacket. Boat training will help you ensure the safety of the passengers AND teach you “port” and “starboard”.
When I was doing my original boating license, again the practical part on water was about 20 minutes (starting / stopping and saving somebody from water)
I had much more road practice in my road driving license included, and there wasn't anything unnecessary taught there, I still use 90% of the things taught then when I am driving.