[HN Gopher] Why do ships use "port" and "starboard" instead of "...
___________________________________________________________________
Why do ships use "port" and "starboard" instead of "left" and
"right?"
Author : snitzr
Score : 589 points
Date : 2023-04-18 21:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (oceanservice.noaa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (oceanservice.noaa.gov)
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Because you need to differentiate between "my left when facing
| the boat" and "my left when on the boat facing forward" or
| really, left from any other perspective.
|
| And any time there's a multi-word phrase like that that gets used
| a lot over many years, it gets shortened.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| they need the same terminology for humans:
|
| "raise you left hand. no, your other left!"
| gkoberger wrote:
| Of course, but this article explains what each word means.
|
| 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
| callamdelaney wrote:
| You can dock a boat anyway you like, or have been instructed
| to do so by the dockmaster.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Passenger vessels typically dock port side to the dock.
| Same with aircraft.
| gkoberger wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| "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)"
| callamdelaney wrote:
| There are definitely more boats with bilateral symmetry
| than asymmetric these days.
| hinkley wrote:
| But if you have a steering board on the other side of your
| ship, it's a lot easier to dock facing the other way.
| [deleted]
| usr1106 wrote:
| Port makes sense, never thought about it. Ships I see rarely,
| so I couldn't tell which side they use (or even both
| depending on the harbor) But for passenger planes it's
| definitely left.
|
| 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?
| Svip wrote:
| Similarly, the Danish terms are >>styrbord<< and
| >>bagbord<<, respectively. >>Bagbord<< comes from >>bag<<
| (back) meaning the backside of the sailor steering the
| boat, because they would be facing the steering side
| (>>styrbord<<; >>styr<< still means to steer today).
| seer wrote:
| I remember thinking why didn't they just use "boat left" or
| something, but then at the sailing coarse I took, I remember
| there was a boat heading toward us and I was skippering, had to
| communicate exactly how I wanted to pass the other ship - and
| saying "to port" was just soo simple and easy - a "to our boats
| left" would have been way too long and you had to communicate
| things quite quickly... That's when it "clicked" how useful
| this shorthand really was.
| deepsun wrote:
| What are correct naming for skiing slope direction?
|
| Left/right might mean looking from the mountain top, or from the
| bottom as on maps.
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| The first paragraph is the right answer. See also
| inboard/outboard, fwd/aft.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| That was a great explanation thanks for posting
| fargle wrote:
| When I was a kid in Minnesota we needed to learn port/starboard
| and the colors red/green.
|
| 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.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| This would probably throw my girlfriend off.
|
| 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.
| drpixie wrote:
| I was taught "Jack left port" and I know port (wine) is red.
| riffraff wrote:
| Holy crap my wife is the same, I have to tell her "turn my
| way" or "turn your way".
|
| 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!
| cornholio wrote:
| Whenever I hear the words 'left' and 'right' and have to
| act on them, i slightly twitch the corresponding arm or
| foot, and then can orient myself accordingly.
|
| 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.
| fargle wrote:
| I was once driving along fine in the left lane and my
| female friend in the passenger seat suddenly yelled "TURN
| RIGHT HERE. RIGHT HERE! RIGHT HERE!!!"
|
| 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.
| tapanjk wrote:
| You sound like Raymond Reddington.
| rjmunro wrote:
| This is basically the plot to the John Cleese film
| Clockwise: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090852/
| m463 wrote:
| or playfully, "no, the OTHER right" :)
| perydell wrote:
| My wife has the same issue. I say turn "your side" or turn
| "my side."
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Fun times ahead if you do international driving :)
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Completely unrelated... my mom had a small dog when she was
| younger. The dog sustained a head injury at some point, and
| after that could only make right turns. If the dog wanted to
| go left, it had to turn 270 degrees to the right. In all
| other ways the dog was completely normal. But now I'm
| wondering if the dog wanted to lie on its left side, would it
| lie on its right side, roll into its back, and then settle on
| its left side?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| In our relationship it's me who has that. So she'll tell me
| "right" and "no, the other right". Or vice versa.
| SoapSeller wrote:
| My driving instructor had short pieces of colored tape on the
| beams between the windshield and side windows.
|
| 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.
| gooseyman wrote:
| I'm interested in the about the phrasing "in the next
| left/right."
|
| 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!
| kalleboo wrote:
| I also have a hesitation when it comes to left/right. As a
| kid I could only ever remember it as "left is the arm I wear
| my watch" so even as an adult I always had to take a second
| to think "watch arm or not" even a decade into the cell phone
| era when I stopped wearing a watch.
|
| 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.
| zarzavat wrote:
| I was taught the mnemonic "There's no red port left in the
| bottle". Port wine is red.
| noxvilleza wrote:
| Port wine (in a decanter) is also traditionally passed to the
| left when being poured.
| fargle wrote:
| Nice. Except I prefer Tawny Port, but I'll still remember it.
| Biganon wrote:
| I think "there's some red port left in the bottle" would be
| better ; the negation kinda made me think "red" (or "port")
| was NOT "left".
| tacticus wrote:
| From memory the No Red Port Left is also about Red on Red
| passing for ships
| m463 wrote:
| probably not very politically correct anymore, but "You Write
| with your Right"
|
| (also righty tighty, lefty loosey)
| mikelward wrote:
| It's unfortunate that some headphones have a red "(R)" symbol
| to mark the right side, which is the opposite of the red = port
| convention.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Left is larboard (starts with L), which isn't starboard. So
| starboard is right. When you're facing the prow, of course!
| croes wrote:
| Or simply StaRRRboard is right
| evrimoztamur wrote:
| PoRRRt!
| croes wrote:
| Never heart an ORRR from a pirate.
| [deleted]
| deltarholamda wrote:
| P.J. O'Rourke made the quip that "port wine is red, and so is
| your face if you get port and starboard mixed up." Which
| doesn't help, but it's funny.
|
| 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.
| Infernal wrote:
| I learned "right red dead" in aviation - if you see the red
| light right of the green light, it means the other plane is
| headed for you!
| myspy wrote:
| Great info. So starboard is where the steering wheel is. Like in
| cars in England or Japan it's the right side. Now I know how to
| remember that.
| sime2009 wrote:
| The words "port" and "left" have 4 letters each. That is how I
| remember it.
| oriettaxx wrote:
| better https://www.divescotty.com/underwater-blog/boat-side-
| starboa...
| pwagland wrote:
| I like this description, but I have always thought that the
| saying "There is some red port left in the bottle" a much
| simpler way of remembering the conjunction of these terms.
| Assuming you are fasting forwards in the boat of course!
| taeric wrote:
| Much better explanation! Thanks for linking it in.
| jeffwass wrote:
| Great description of the meaning behind the red and green
| lights on boats, thanks for sharing.
| cubefox wrote:
| For trains it is just left/right. "Please exit the train on the
| left side."
| user070223 wrote:
| Related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_motions#Translational
| cromulent wrote:
| For those who think left/right is enough: When you are racing
| sailboats, a boat on your "left" (or "right") can have "right" of
| way because the wind is hitting their main sail from the "right"
| and yours from the "left".
|
| They will yell "starboard!" at you, rather than "left" or
| "right". Easier that way.
| iamnotsure wrote:
| Governments should use outer 3d body scans instead of photos to
| reduce the mayhem that mirrors, cameras and screens cause in the
| unconscious of humans. Also ban vehicles with mirrored letters.
| tim_hutton wrote:
| The only was I can remember which is port and starboard is by
| thinking about boarding an airplane. The steps/tunnel are always
| docked on the 'port' side, just as boats always dock on the port
| side. The cockpit/bow is always on your left when you board.
| bacon_waffle wrote:
| That'll trip you up if you ever board Tally Ho, her front door
| is on the starboard[0].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpulXX1cros
| cyberax wrote:
| My shortcut: "port" and "left" have the same number of letters.
| Yoofie wrote:
| This is the same method I use. I always wondered why they
| didn't use the cardinal directions (north, east, south, west)
| or why they didn't use the hours of a clock face to indicate
| direction. With the clock face, you get even more precision
| where exactly something happened. _Man overboard, 4 o
| 'clock!_
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| That'd be "3 points abaft the starboard beam"
| j5155 wrote:
| In my experience with man overboard drills clock faces are
| used as you describe. Port/starboard is only for low
| precision things.
| Niksko wrote:
| And further, "port" wine is red, and the red beacon light is
| on the port side of an aeroplane (with the starboard side
| having green, and white on the tail)
| lamontcg wrote:
| the shorter word: port left
| red
|
| the longer word; starboard right
| green
| dmckeon wrote:
| But if you are working with horses or other draft animals,
| you work them from the "near" (left) side, and not the
| "off" (right) side. Next up in directions trivia: shotgun,
| deasil, and widdershins.
| hinkley wrote:
| r and s are next to each other, l is closer to p than to
| anything else.
| zwily wrote:
| I've always remembered it by "port and left both have 4
| letters". It has always worked for me.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I always remember the phrase 'there's no port left in the
| bottle'. Similarly, the port-side navigation lights are red,
| the same colour as port.
| harry8 wrote:
| Always? Ferries are boats, demonstrably not true there as they
| dock both sides.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| And "fore" and "aft" are useful to disambiguate the ends of
| boats that flip 90 degrees in pitch, because the front
| becomes the top and the back becomes the bottom.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULvLeK9O7fY
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shPATcV9Dzw
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQxQfQU_hsk
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| An excellent way to remove unwanted crew members!
| tudjvhh wrote:
| It's not true in general that boats always dock on the port
| side.
| Already__Taken wrote:
| position: absolute Vs position: relative
|
| Interesting though the Americans swapped the colours guiding you
| in a channel but the names have never been flipped.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Maybe connected, that air vessels today are also boarded from the
| left.
| michalskop wrote:
| "Left side" and "right side" is unambiguous, because there is one
| given direction (forward). It is the same as "left bank" and
| "right bank" of a river (it is always looking downstream). For
| example, Slavic languages usually just use some sort of "left
| side" and "right side".
| notatoad wrote:
| it's unambiguous if you know you're talking about direction
| relative to the boat, but you don't know that you're talking
| about direction relative to the boat.
|
| 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"
| mr_toad wrote:
| The left bank of the Seine is quite iconic!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rive_Gauche
| ranting-moth wrote:
| "The ship left the port".
|
| Now you'll always remember that _port_ is the _left_ side.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Fun and easy mnemonic: Port = LEFT (4 letters in
| each word, same vowel/consonant placement) Port = Red
| as in Port Wine Therefore, navigation lights: Red =
| Port = Left
|
| If you remember that, then starboard is just "not port"
| the_cramer wrote:
| Back when i had sailing lessons, the skipper told us this story
| about the sailors coming home to harbour after weeks of sailing
| the oceans. They returned to their loved ones who they kept in
| their HEART which is RED and LEFT and since they were sailing
| towards the port, the RED lights are to be kept left from the
| ship.
|
| It stuck.
| jahnu wrote:
| Worth mentioning that harbour signal lights are not the same
| the world over
|
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/69030/why-does-t...
| xiphias2 wrote:
| They should get rid of these terms, as they are distracting.
|
| 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).
| CardenB wrote:
| They are not distracting. There are many intense situations on
| a boat, and a crew is required to cooperate in order to
| survive. This means you must have extremely precise wording to
| quickly explain what needs to be done. This vocabulary is
| important for this reason, and is able to sharpen focus, rather
| than distract.
|
| It requires a process of learning, and that is intentional.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| If you look at statistics, most deaths occur in small boats
| with a crew who have no idea what these words mean, because
| they don't have a license.
|
| 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.
| stametseater wrote:
| Maybe boat lingo improves safety by keeping people in the
| mind-frame of being on a boat.
| CardenB wrote:
| I'm not sure you have really thought this through.
|
| 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".
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what boat training you're talking about. I
| just did my sea boating license last year in Croatia, and
| it was all in a room, just like the exam.
|
| 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.
| lsaferite wrote:
| In English "right" is one syllable and "starboard" is two.
| All things considered, using right/left is more concise. If
| you are aware enough of your orientation on a boat to know
| where port and starboard are located, you are also aware
| enough to know where left and right are located.
| wpietri wrote:
| Concision is way less important than clarity.
| anilakar wrote:
| Clarity stems from brevity i.e. concise, carefully chosen
| words that leave no room for ambiguity.
| wpietri wrote:
| Clarity absolutely does not stem from brevity. Brevity is
| good, but it pushes toward ambiguity, not clarity.
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
| quenched wrote:
| Eg if you're trying to shout over the wind.
| int_19h wrote:
| Although from the same perspective the phonetic
| similarity "port" and "board" is probably not ideal,
| either.
| eternityforest wrote:
| The different number of syllables are like a checksum.
|
| 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.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| > ...in the kitchen I watch out for putting something in
| the microwave instead of the fridge because the action is
| similar
|
| A familiar experience... I have to catch myself when I
| start to throw the spoon into the bin and the teabag into
| the dishwasher!
| CardenB wrote:
| You spend much at least one more syllable to indicate which
| frame of reference (local or boat). It's easier to map it
| to a vocab word.
| hooverd wrote:
| I'd bet port and starboard are easier to communicate
| unambiguously than left and right. Absolute positioning,
| one syllable vs two, different ending sounds vs both ending
| a "tuh" sound.
| molly0 wrote:
| I'm trying to learn my 2y old kid "left" and "right". It's hard.
| java-man wrote:
| I wonder why more people are right-handed. What could be a
| biological basis for that?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| There is an interesting game theory explanation.
|
| 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.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| tomohelix wrote:
| Probably the same reason why most biomolecules are chiral, i.e.
| having left and right 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| I doubt that, as we left-handers are made up of the same sort
| of molecule as everybody else.
| tomohelix wrote:
| Haha no, I think you misunderstood. I meant the underlying
| reason for human to have a preferred "side" is probably the
| same reason that life has a preferred "side" for chemicals.
| Both humans and enzymes can be chiral, i.e. asymmetrical so
| I think they might be connected.
|
| Don't worry, I am not an atom-ist or a chiral-ist. All
| sides are equal! (except the ambidextrous master race :D )
| wpietri wrote:
| What is the reason you have in mind?
|
| 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.
| tomohelix wrote:
| I actually don't know. Like I mentioned above, there have
| been a few theories about how life is so strongly
| asymmetrical but nothing concrete or proven yet. In fact,
| it is a bit counterintuitive because all natural chemical
| reactions produces racemic mixtures and only life
| produces specific stereoisomers. It also means life has
| evolved to give up nearly half of the natural resources
| available, a very strange thing in terms of evolution.
|
| 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| Speaking as a nominal leftie who is effectively
| ambidextrous for everything but writing, I don't think
| we're better. I'm just not particularly good at sports.
| Body-things take more time to learn, and I have to
| practice with both sides if I want to be good at both
| sides.
|
| 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.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| "It's complicated."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Causes
| orbital-decay wrote:
| AFAIK the left/right hemisphere division is extremely
| complicated and cannot be reduced to being responsible for
| different activities.
| tempodox wrote:
| I love articles like this. Snappy, to the point, without
| unnecessary fluff. And I actually learned something. I enjoy
| understanding the history of language and culture.
| manojlds wrote:
| Does it really explain why or even give a reason that makes
| sense. The steering was right so right side was called starboard?
| How does that make sense? So just call right right and left left.
| cubefox wrote:
| Yeah, it's not really an explanation.
| rmrk wrote:
| It's funny to me that some olaf 1000 years ago just called them
| what they were; the steering side and the docking side, and now
| we have to use the same words which don't make any sense to us. I
| vote we just call them the steering-side and the docking-side
| again.
| lardo wrote:
| My understanding is that port's usage is somewhat recent. In
| the English sailing world the opposite of starboard was
| larboard. The royal navy made the change within the last few
| hundred years.
| greesil wrote:
| One of the fun things I learned when reading master and
| commander was this.
| soneil wrote:
| The steering side is now the back. And docking .. in the
| Mediterranean the docking side is commonly the back too. In
| Scandinavia it's commonly the front.
|
| It's probably for the best that they've been detached from
| their original meanings.
| wpietri wrote:
| Unfortunately, we no longer have consistent steering and
| docking sides. So first you're going to have to rebuild a lot
| of ships.
| taeric wrote:
| This explanation feels kind of awkward. My left hand does not
| depend on my orientation, so I am unclear why the "left side" of
| a boat would.
|
| 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."
| FoomFries wrote:
| Because if you face the back of the boat the sides reverse.
| It's similar to stage left. When you can't afford to be
| confused, one name is better than a conflicting argument
| between your left and the boats left.
| taeric wrote:
| But if I'm looking at you and speak of your left hand, I am
| not speaking of the hand to my left. Literally nobody does
| that. At least not on purpose.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Do you own a car? Commonly when speaking with a mechanic
| they'll ask questions like Driver's side or Passenger's
| side to get away from left/right.
|
| 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.
| bch wrote:
| Reminds me of this book[0] about (air-cooled) VW
| maintenance, which goes right into how to tear down and
| rebuild the engine. Anyway, it can be disorienting, at
| the back of the car, looking at the engine and knowing
| what's front/back, but I recall he wrote something like:
| Now look at the front of the engine (FRONT IS FRONT) and
| you'll see...
|
| Also, happens to generally be one of the most beautiful
| to read and to look-at technical manuals I can think of.
| Right up there w The C Programming Language.
|
| [0] https://olsensvw.net/shop/engine/idiot-book-how-to-
| keep-your...
| tomrod wrote:
| Ambiguity can be cultural. In some dialects in the
| Philippines, the only required preposition is "sa".
| Others exist, but aren't required for speaking.
|
| It's intriguing to say the least.
| taeric wrote:
| You aren't wrong. In that mistakes can be made. But if I
| ask you about your left hand, is that ambiguous? By your
| definition here, that is an ambiguous question. But, that
| just feels wrong.
|
| Edit: I'll note that it is amusing to compare to cars. It
| seems the etymology of the terms is literally "driver
| side".
| rng_civ wrote:
| It's not ambiguous because you have a directional
| reference built into the phrase and speaking directly to
| a singular person: "ask _you_ about _your_ left hand ".
|
| 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.
| taeric wrote:
| This still falls due to you having to have a point of
| reference for front of boat. See other threads where
| double ended ones do not have fixed starboard and port.
|
| I am still on board with dedicated terms.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| What if you're addressing someone on a boat who's facing
| sideways? Or a group of people facing different directions?
| Or you can't see them and don't know which direction
| they're facing, and they don't know which direction you're
| facing?
| Uehreka wrote:
| The problem is that people (especially in stressful
| situations when they're not thinking carefully) will say
| things like "that one on the left!" and the person they're
| talking to (who is often facing them and thus reversed)
| won't think to ask "my left or yours?"
|
| 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.
| uoaei wrote:
| There is no "left", there is only "your left" or "my left".
| binarymax wrote:
| Because left and right are ambiguous - are you talking about MY
| left or the boat's left? Having unambiguous names let's us
| differentiate and avoid confusion.
|
| 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.
| Clamchop wrote:
| Yes but why would you ever be talking about your left? Use
| the definite article, THE left, and it should be clear by
| convention for the sailors.
|
| I think it's just historical.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Any room for error is a guarantee that a human will mess it
| up. Left already has a definition, so there's room for
| confusion; a word specifically talking about the ship is
| more concise.
| binarymax wrote:
| Imagine you are crew, standing on a ship. You are facing
| east, and the bow of the ship is facing north. It's night
| and there is a thick fog.
|
| 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.
| taeric wrote:
| This feels contrived, to be honest. Late at night on a
| vehicle that isn't moving with no other discerning
| factors to distinguish things, and you are basically
| screwed. Though, realistically, you are just going to
| wherever the shouting is coming from, you are not going
| to go slow to orient yourself to the vehicle. Even
| better, someone would yell something even more defining
| for where to catch someone that is going to be specific
| to the boat you are on. (Well, more realistically, you
| have hopefully practiced emergency drills such that the
| term is almost irrelevant, you have practiced so much.)
|
| 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| Great points. And I'd add that thanks to wind and water,
| ships can also move in directions besides the obvious
| one. So it's possible in this case the boat could be
| moving west, giving another direction that left could be
| relative to.
| xg15 wrote:
| Whether "the left" means your left, the ship's left or yet
| another left (the harbour's?) is highly ambiguous. You
| can't assume that everyone will instantly understand this
| correctly.
|
| 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.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| "Left" vs "the left" is not good enough. That could still
| mean either concept semantically, and you can't be sure the
| person speaking to you didn't mess up the convention when
| the two are that close.
|
| 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.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Pass that to the left
| DonHopkins wrote:
| As opposed to "the other left".
| wpietri wrote:
| There are other uses for the definite article. E.g., "Down
| the hall and on the left." It's also used in relation to
| motion. "Go to the left of that ship." Even if you went
| with it, though, it still has the potential to be
| confusing.
|
| 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.
| quenched wrote:
| There's a similar issue in medical imaging, when oriented
| with the patient "facing you". Then my left is patient right
| and vice versa.
|
| 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/
| taeric wrote:
| I can see it as advantageous. With the major caveat that it
| is only advantageous to folks that have been taught it. Not
| shockingly, a large portion of the passengers on a boat are
| going to be confused if told to go to the starboard windows
| to see the whales that are beside the boat. How will you
| explain it? I'm going to guess that you will probably say
| "right." :D. (Note that this isn't hypothetical. I take a
| ferry fairly often, and surprisingly few of us know starboard
| from port.)
| xg15 wrote:
| Yes, in _that_ situation, you can confidently tell them to
| look to their right, because you can assume that most of
| them will sit in direction of travel and face forward.
| However, the same is not true for a sailor who might be
| running around on deck.
| taeric wrote:
| This isn't accurate, either. Most of us are decidedly not
| facing the direction of travel. Specifically, we are
| evenly split in large parts of the boat, as they have
| bench chairs that face each other. Or you are on the side
| of the boat facing out.
|
| 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.
| dceddia wrote:
| Port and starboard are indeed fixed (same with bow and
| stern), so that no matter which way the boat is moving or
| the passengers are facing, those words always refer to
| the same physical sides of the boat :)
| taeric wrote:
| Per another thread, this may not be the case for ferries?
| At least not for ones that don't turn around. (Note that
| many "people ferry" boats are able to turn around. Larger
| car ferries are fully symmetric and have no fixed
| bow/stern.
|
| 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.
| dceddia wrote:
| Hmm interesting. Wonder if they have some non-symmetrical
| parts, like the location of the engine maybe?
| taeric wrote:
| Not the ones I ride. They have engines on each end.
|
| 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.)
| toast0 wrote:
| Sure. If nothing else, they've got labels on 'end 1' and
| 'end 2', and the rest of the boat is labeled into
| quadrants that don't change (A-D). If there's a galley,
| that's on one end or the other; the passenger deck is
| assymmetric.
|
| 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.
| dvt wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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).
| bloppe wrote:
| Because "boat left" and "boat right" just didn't catch on.
| gerdesj wrote:
| True but you are not wandering around yourself! I agree though
| that the first para looks like just so nonsense. I know plenty
| of matelots (UK Navy) that use left and right, sharp end and
| blunt end for the cardinal points of a vessel. I do as well and
| use port, starb'd, bow and stern as they do too.
|
| 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.
| soneil wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Just to keep things fun, that's the european convention. In
| the US it's "red right returning", the exact opposite.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| Same issue in auto repair. It'd be nice to use port/starboard
| when referring to stuff in an engine compartment or on a car in
| general.
|
| 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.
| daneel_w wrote:
| The etymology hails from old Norse and the Viking age, before
| making it into English. Styrbord, the side you steer (styr) on,
| and Babord/bakbord, the side your back (bak/bakat) faces.
| TheSoftwareGuy wrote:
| Same reason we have North/South/East/West, basically
| drewrv wrote:
| I understand that the terms are mostly unambiguous, but I always
| wonder how these get defined in edge cases. For example ferries,
| at least where I live, alternate the direction of travel as they
| go back and forth. There isn't a fixed "bow" or "stern" from
| which to define port and starboard.
| gerdesj wrote:
| P and S are really defined by the direction of travel or what
| you decide they are. They are just conventions.
|
| 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)
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Oh great, now we will have flying ferrys.... or perhaps
| swimming planes!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgweA8tlh8Q
| gerdesj wrote:
| Bee fish! What a delightful idea. We do seem to insist on
| the weird when we elect officials in democracy lands. On
| the bright side we do actually get to elect these odd balls
| rather than have them dropped into place from above.
|
| 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?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| This is a great question imo but I struggled to find anything
| very good. I found a forum post,
| https://www.sailnet.com/threads/double-ended-ferries-which-e...
| and between the trolling it seems that fore/aft and
| port/starboard switch when the direction reverses, including eg
| navigation lights (red for port, green for starboard). And they
| tend to also have a one end and a two end or an A/B end, and
| those labels don't change.
| hinkley wrote:
| Does that mean when you file a maintenance request they have
| to number everything on the ship since "aft 2nd floor"
| doesn't narrow things down much?
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| Spars and ribs (frame) are usually numbered, often based on
| distance, like interstate exits.
|
| "Ten sequential rivets debonded on aft starboard #273 spar"
| would then be a writeup.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I've seen the 1 and 2 labels on barges near me.
|
| 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.
| twawaaay wrote:
| The thing to remember is that those directions are used for an
| awful number of things that have nothing to do with the ship
| moving. Like when you name places for storing things or various
| pieces of equipment. Changing those names would create a lot of
| mayhem.
|
| 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.
| taeric wrote:
| Though, as it turns out, double-ended craft are defined by
| the direction they are operating.
|
| 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.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| But they are on a fixed route...
| taeric wrote:
| Ha! I thought of this in one of the down thread discussions.
| Very curious on any official answer here, and I'll have to pay
| attention to the lights on the ferry, next time I'm on it.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Those ferries should be switching the direction the crew faces
| (perhaps in a different structure on the other end of the boat)
| and turning on the appropriate lights so port and starboard are
| lit correctly. They should have two sets of colored lights to
| handle travel in both directions.
| xg15 wrote:
| Don't they have to swap the lights anyway if the ferry
| reverses direction? After all, the red/green indicators are
| primarily for showing which direction the ship is moving in.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| If I understand you correctly, yes, exactly.
| hinkley wrote:
| With double ended ferries you're going to dock bow first
| because that's the direction all the cars pointed.
|
| 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.
| cromulent wrote:
| Cable/chain ferries would not be able to turn around of
| course, the drivers would have to deal with it.
| hinkley wrote:
| Are there any cabled ferries that go beyond line of
| sight?
| dmurray wrote:
| Depends on the time of day and the weather.
| phire wrote:
| For bidirectional ferries, I assume they just pick a direction
| all the way back at design time and stick to it.
|
| The direction might not matter, but consistency does.
| Xylakant wrote:
| I'm fairly confident that the "bow" in that case is always
| the direction of travel in this case and that starboard/port
| side change.
|
| 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.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Pretty much every boat with onboard motors are capable of
| reversing thrust. Do they all switch like that when
| traveling in reverse? (Serious question, not a boat person,
| never been on a boat that wasn't a ferry )
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Steering can be much harder in reverse because the rudder
| is now at the wrong end.
| uoaei wrote:
| No, but you've already decided a direction that the bow
| points when using the word "reverse".
| Xylakant wrote:
| "Normal" boats only go in reverse when they are
| maneuvering, never for extended distances and at travel
| speeds. Unless they're purpose built they never travel in
| reverse - rudders are less efficient if going reverse,
| propellers are as well, and hulls are shaped to reduce
| drag when going forward.
|
| 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.
| jprete wrote:
| I don't think boats travel in reverse very often because
| it's inefficient to do so. If the boat is going in
| reverse, it's probably docking, maneuvering, or having
| problems. In any of those cases, the crew should be
| situationally aware enough, and the boat slow enough,
| that they don't need color-coded lights to keep
| themselves from causing a collision.
| jprete wrote:
| They can't do it that way because the question of right of
| way only matters when two boats are going towards each other.
| The coloration is an easy visual indicator of where a boat is
| generally going that doesn't require seeing any other part of
| the boat to work, and will even work in fog. You cannot
| safely flip the directions for any fraction of the boat's
| travel.
| geephroh wrote:
| The Washington State ferry system uses double-ended vessels
| with a pilot house on each end with the crew swapping between
| them at each crossing. Whichever end the crew are at becomes
| the bow.[1]
|
| 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...
| jes wrote:
| Kirkland, WA resident here. There is signage on the boat that
| uniquely identifies the #1 end and the #2 end of the boat.
| Can be helpful in finding your way back to your vehicle if
| you drove onto the ferry instead of being a walk-on
| passenger.
| somenameforme wrote:
| There's kind of a fun brain teaser related to this. Imagine
| you're speaking to an entirely alien species in another
| dimension. And you're trying to describe "left" to them. It's
| impossible.
|
| 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.
| dguest wrote:
| It turns out you can define it from looking at radioactive
| decay (or any other interaction governed by the weak force).
| Feynman famously had a short description that ended with the
| punch line
|
| > 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.
| cubefox wrote:
| That claim needs to be substantiated.
| qubidt wrote:
| The assertion that it is possible or the attribution to
| Feynman? Scientific American [1] references Feynman's 4th
| Messenger lecture at Cornell: "Symmetry in Physical Law"
| (1964) [2] [3]
|
| [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-
| freedom/gala...
|
| [2] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/messenger.html
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7K1kXeK-tY
| dguest wrote:
| Which claim? The full transcript of the Feynman story is
| available online [1], you can search for "martian" to get
| right to the story. It's presented in the context of
| explaining CP symmetry, which says that physics is
| conserved under a parity (mirror reflection) plus charge
| inversion (matter -> antimatter) transformation. Of course
| it's only approximate [2].
|
| 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!
|
| [1]: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_52.html
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I think it should also be possible with electro magnetism. By
| first defining the sign convention for electron flow and then
| deriving left hand and right hand rules of magnetism or
| something like that. It's a bit tricky to explain the sign
| convention, but I think if one sticks with the movement of
| elementary particles, it should work.
| pgorczak wrote:
| Yeah the handedness of a 3D coordinate system is a pretty
| arbitrary low level choice. You don't even need to talk to
| aliens, just try implementing some geometric algorithm in Unity
| which uses a left-handed system.
| junon wrote:
| Not sure I understand. Directions are relative. I'd describe
| "left" how I describe every other direction.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Imagine they use word 'right' for 'left' but you don't know
| about it. How will you describe true left/right to them?
| perlgeek wrote:
| How would you describe it?
|
| 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?
| cypress66 wrote:
| Just draw a view frustum and mark up, down, left, right,
| near, far.
| perlgeek wrote:
| That helps if you meet them in person, but if you
| communicate through radio waves, they'll have no way to
| know how to decode signal into an image with the intended
| left/right and up/down orientation
| [deleted]
| meschi wrote:
| I think this is due to the bilateral symmetry of most animals.
| But imagine being non-symmetric yourself (or the alien race
| being non-symmetric). The concepts of left and right seem to
| become much more communicable now.
| codingdave wrote:
| It isn't impossible, it is just arbitrary. The whole reason we
| can have this huge thread about different names for directions
| is that they is just arbitrary labels, with groups of people
| having a consensus on what word to use.
|
| 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.
| somenameforme wrote:
| That's entirely relative to the direction that a body is
| orbiting about another.
| codingdave wrote:
| Shadows come from the rotation of the earth, not its orbit.
| But you are still correct - if the earth suddenly started
| having inconsistency in the direction it spins, that
| explanation would fall apart.
| serial_dev wrote:
| I wish they gave or examples as to why simple left and right
| would be confusing, and how port and starboard are different and
| better.
|
| Maybe because I'm from a landlocked country, but this article
| didn't help me understand the _why_.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| A sailor, looking towards the back of the boat:
|
| - 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 ?
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| You only know which side is port or starboard by figuring out
| your orientation compared to the ship and picking the left
| side of the ship.
|
| So it's not actually achieving anything. You could just say
| left always refers to the ship's left.
| otherme123 wrote:
| You still use left and right on board, but referring to
| other things. E.g. you sit on the left side of the table,
| and by using "left" it's clear that your reference is the
| table itself and not the ship.
|
| 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_.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Port and starboard become instinctive very quickly, with no
| mental gymnastics needed. Left and right are confusing,
| there must be a reason all sailors are using those terms..
| eviks wrote:
| That reason is called tradition
| vraid wrote:
| This all feels a bit like arguing against the use of
| cardinal directions because they don't make sense unless
| you learn them first.
|
| 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.
| jgilias wrote:
| Imagine ten sailors on a ship, each facing a different
| direction and trying to coordinate their actions by shouting
| 'left' and 'right' to each other.
|
| - Turn it left, no, I mean the ship's left, not my left!
| eviks wrote:
| You could just shout ship's left or boat's left or shorten
| those to shleft or something, more intuitive than all those
| old terms
| defen wrote:
| They say that it's because "left" and "right" depend on your
| orientation (it would perhaps be confusing to talk about "the
| left side of the boat" if you're facing the stern (rear) and
| the side in question is on your right).
|
| 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.
| easeout wrote:
| OK but what if you don't know their car is starboard-side
| drive?
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| Nearside (near the kerb) and offside (the other side).
| stephen_g wrote:
| It's a bit like theater - left and right are different
| depending on whether you're looking at the stage (such as from
| the audience) or looking out from the stage. So you have to
| have "stage left" and "house left" (and the same for right) to
| distinguish them. But it's still confusing if somebody just
| says left. Which left?
|
| 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.
| AlexMuir wrote:
| No different than a house - you don't refer to the Left Wing,
| but the West Wing.
| eviks wrote:
| Where is West?
| simonh wrote:
| Left and Right didn't have their modern meaning back then. In
| Old English riht meant straight, as in direct or not bent. It
| later assumed the meaning of correct as in right and wrong.
| Lyft meant weak. Their reference to handedness seems to have
| been incidental. It seems odd to us to talk about the
| 'straight' and 'weak' hand, but to them it made sense, but
| maybe not to talk about the 'straight' or 'weak' sides of a
| boat.
|
| 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".
| zwieback wrote:
| "Driver" and "passenger" side for cars. Oh wait, doesn't work in
| England etc.
|
| 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?
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I've always assumed that "driver" and "passenger" were simply
| reversed for England, etc.
|
| I'd reverse it for postal trucks, after all, or cars imported
| from England and such.
| chimprich wrote:
| In the UK the (possibly?) more common terms are nearside
| (kerb side) and offside (road side).
|
| 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.
| zwieback wrote:
| Right, that was my point. The article says that
| port/starboard is used because left/right is confusing
| depending on the direction. But unlike ships cars have the
| driver side right or left so it's not that useful.
| Someone wrote:
| > Starboard is presumably where the wheel was
|
| 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."_
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It still works just as well in England...
|
| 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.)
| jiayo wrote:
| Having grown up in a large transit-oriented city, I learned to
| drive as a grownup. I really struggled with the concept of
| reversing. "Turn the wheel left!" "You just turn the wheel the
| way you want the _back_ of the car to go." "No, the other
| left!"
|
| 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.
| vivegi wrote:
| This question is the cousin of _In the North-pole, which
| direction is South?_
| emrah wrote:
| These seem no less confusing honestly (do they still load from
| the "port" side? What about yachts?). They reference a particular
| side of the boat but as referenced to a specific spot on the boat
| (where the steering is or was in the past). If you are not
| standing there, you still need to do some mapping in your head.
| dmichulke wrote:
| In German: starboard = Steuerbord
|
| From steuern, much closer phonetically to steor, with the meaning
| of to steer, to direct, to control
| benatkin wrote:
| > English words: steor (meaning "steer") and bord (meaning "the
| side of a boat")
|
| "steer" as in _steer manure_?
| callamdelaney wrote:
| It's fairly natural to me that port is left but that is only
| because I've spent quite a bit of time on boats + attaining
| relevant certificates.
| milemi wrote:
| I read that the British word posh comes from Port Out - Starboard
| Home, which is the type of UK to US return ticket you'd get, if
| you could afford it, to have a cabin facing the sun both ways.
| francisofascii wrote:
| It gets even more confusing when the commanding officer orders
| hard a starboard. Does that mean turn the wheel left or right?
| Apparently it depends on the ship. There is the unsubstantiated
| story the Titanic crew bungled this.
| https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-51664720100922
| Lio wrote:
| Here's a related story I was told[0]:
|
| 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...
| smitty1e wrote:
| Retired USN Surface Warfare Officer here.
|
| 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.
| bartlettD wrote:
| Best comment in this thread, a lot of folks seem to be stuck on
| the etymology rather than the very deliberate use of special
| keywords in collabrative working.
|
| 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...
| brontosaurusrex wrote:
| When it gets really confusing is when you are on a sailboat and
| get the command to pull 'altabasa' (you may know it's a type of
| rope, but no idea which one or even where is the pulling
| location).
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| Because the words come from Dutch nautical terms. "Starboard" is
| really "Steer-board", an external keel on one side of a boat.
| Therefore Port is the only side of the boat that can dock to the
| port.
| perbu wrote:
| The old Norse term "stjornbordi" likely predates the dutch and
| old English terms, fwiw.
|
| Stjorn means stern, so the back of the boat. I'm guess bordi
| refers to the rudder itself, meaning plank.
|
| From what I gather the OP story is bunk. It's easy to verify.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly what the fine article says. It's not very
| long.
| anamexis wrote:
| Old English, actually, as the very succinct OP explains
| Reason077 wrote:
| To this day, at airports around the world aircraft are almost
| exclusively loaded (the passengers, at least) on the port side.
| Funny how these traditions continue!
| bink wrote:
| Related: Why is it called a "poop deck"?
|
| https://emmacruises.com/poop-decks-what-are-they-and-why-are...
| ArchieMaclean wrote:
| Presumably it came from Latin 'puppis' (aft, stern, poop deck)
| before the passing through French to English.
| CalChris wrote:
| An additional starboard/port issue is right of way for sailboats.
| Suppose that you're going upwind and two close hauled boats are
| crossing. Who has right of way? 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.
| chewzerita wrote:
| Also a convenient way to remember right of way while on the
| water is to use the port/starboard lights of the approaching
| boat. If you see green (their starboard side) that means you
| have the right of way, and red means they have the right of
| way. Just like traffic lights :)
| bergie wrote:
| That only applies between power boats. Between sailboats the
| direction of wind is what determines the right of way.
|
| And of course power boats must give way to sailing vessels.
| Zironic wrote:
| The rule of thumb I go for with boats is that the vessel
| with worse steering has right of way. For instance a
| freighter has right of way over a sailing boat regardless
| of direction or wind because the freighter isn't going to
| be able to change course in any appreciable amount of time.
| bergie wrote:
| Freighters have right of way in constrained waters, but
| offshore they still need to make way for sailboats.
|
| (Yes, I know colregs is a bit more nuanced than that, but
| I think this is a decent approximation)
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| Plastic boats give way to wooden ship, wooden ships give
| way to metal ships, and nothing gives way anything much
| smaller than itself - Not the colreg rules, but a good
| approximation for unskilled crew members. Especially on a
| wooden ship.
| [deleted]
| varjag wrote:
| Too bad there are no good substitutes for general use that don't
| make you sound like a wannabe pirate.
|
| 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.
| orestis wrote:
| In Greek boating terms, we use just plain left and right. At
| sailing school we were taught that left means always the left
| side of the ship as it travels forward, and similarly the right.
|
| 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.
| jamager wrote:
| In Spanish is babor/estribor. Nothing to do with
| izquierda/derecha, no idea about etimology on this.
| MoSattler wrote:
| It has the same origin as the English equivalents.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/estribor
| coldtea wrote:
| Because left and right change depending on which way you're
| looking at?
| androidbishop wrote:
| same reason I use cardinal directions when giving directions, I'm
| guessing
| kstenerud wrote:
| And through all of this, all I can think of is "There's Klingons
| on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow."
| drpixie wrote:
| Wipe them off, Jim.
| efitz wrote:
| A large part of learning to sail a boat is learning the
| terminology.
|
| 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.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| And now with the origin story, I won't forget which is which.
| pseingatl wrote:
| In the US Navy, helm orders are given as left/right, not
| port/starboard.
| coding123 wrote:
| Oh wow, so RV's use the "starboard" side for loading. lol
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| This is not the same explanation that I was familiar with. The
| one I heard was that long ago boats didn't have the rudder on the
| centerline, but was to one side. Because of this configuration
| you also had to have the dock on the other side. The rudder was
| called the a steer-board (eventually pronounced starboard). And
| the dock was the port so that became the port side. So now we
| have starboard and port sides of the ship from this old boat
| type.
|
| 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...
| silisili wrote:
| Sorry, how is it not? AFAICT this is the same thing the linked
| article says.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| You know what. I read the article and for some reason it did
| not see the meaning for words. I need some sleep or coffee.
| darkpatterns wrote:
| One domain where this concept of handling ambiguous left and
| right in natural language is generative image AI models like
| StableDiffusion. What I wouldn't give for a clear syntax to
| define what I mean when I say "left side" or "to the right" in a
| way that captures a character or object which may be rotated in
| any number of positions. Running 100 generations with the same
| prompt and different seeds demonstrates how hard this is to solve
| using words.
| antognini wrote:
| It's interesting to compare how different professions handle the
| ambiguity in left/right. In the maritime world they went with an
| approach at one extreme, where they just use two completely
| separate words, "port" and "starboard." (Though that's far from
| the only case where there's a special word for something on a
| boat.)
|
| 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.
| gorbypark wrote:
| In the skiing and mountaineering world we use climbers
| (sometimes "lookers") right/left or skiers right/left to
| differentiate when facing uphill or downhill. I find having
| both is helpful instead of just having a single standardized
| one.
|
| 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.
| tuatoru wrote:
| And in general hiking, referring to streams and rivers one
| may follow or cross, there are the "true left" and "true
| right" banks of the stream. Meaning, left or right looking
| the way the water is flowing: downstream.
| pklausler wrote:
| "East bank" and "west bank" are also used for the sides of
| a watercourse that flows generally north/south, even for
| bits of it that are flowing east/west or have curved around
| to flow south/north. Which is why West St. Paul (Minnesota)
| is directly south of St. Paul proper -- it's on the "west
| bank" of the Mississippi, while St. Paul is on the "east
| bank".
|
| (Same story, mutadis mutandis, for "north bank" and "south
| bank" of generally east/west-flowing rivers.)
| illegalsmile wrote:
| We always say "river left" or "river right" but same same.
| altec3 wrote:
| Yep, these are the terms I've always used when whitewater
| rafting.
| wazoox wrote:
| In French, starboard and port are "tribord" (same etymology as
| "starboard", through Dutch) and "babord" ("back (of the oarman)
| board").
|
| On stage, they are "cote cour" and "cote jardin" because the
| "Comedie-Francaise" 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.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| In English, there's an archaic "larboard" meaning "port
| side". My understanding is that this word was intentionally
| banished due to confusion originating from the sound being so
| similar to "starboard".
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Makes good sense. Imagine trying to scream that to someone
| at night in a storm after you've both had a ration of rum.
|
| 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.
| tropicaljacket wrote:
| this is mentioned in the linked article
| lynguist wrote:
| In German it's Steuerbord (meaning the same as starboard) and
| Backbord (compare Middle Low German ba(c)kbort and Dutch
| bakboort; oldest mention of this form is from old English:
| baecbord!)
|
| 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.
| yowzadave wrote:
| Interestingly, on tennis courts you have the "deuce" side,
| which is to the right of the player, and the "ad" side, which
| is to the left of the player. Because you have two players
| facing each other, the deuce sides for each player are
| diagonally opposite from a neutral observer's perspective.
| [deleted]
| wrigby wrote:
| I also really like the theatrical world's convention of
| "upstage" (further from the audience) and "downstage" (closer
| to the audience) - disambiguating the front and back of a
| stage.
| tzs wrote:
| There's also the approach taken in some Australian native
| languages, e.g. [1], where they use absolute directions instead
| of relative directions, so they would call what we call the
| port side of a boat the north side if the boat was heading
| east, and call it the west side if the boat was heading north.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuuk_Thaayorre_language
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Ask a farmer for directions. In my experience it's more
| likely they will tell you to turn north/south/east/west than
| left or right.
| yafbum wrote:
| Maybe in the US and other places that have a grid system as
| their main road planning principle and route naming
| principle? In Europe, where roads tend to follow the
| terrain more, I've not really heard this.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| The US doesn't really have a (consistent) grid system
| outside of cities, with the notable exception of Utah
| (due to planning efforts by the Mormon pioneers). And
| even in cities it can be a mess. For example Seattle grew
| from three different smaller areas that all planned their
| roads to be parallel to the coast. The problem is the
| coast isn't in a straight line so as they grew and
| combined into a single city it created a lot of awkward
| intersections where the roads meet.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Much of the inner US was divided by the Homestead Acts of
| the 1860's into square mile (640 acre) sections, 160 acre
| quarters, and then further into forty's. cf "back forty".
| These are all square.
| yafbum wrote:
| ? I'm not talking about the suburbs of Seattle, check out
| maps of rural areas of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri,
| Texas, Nebraska, or even the plains in the east of
| Washington state, most of the rural roads are running
| primarily North/South or East/West. Not that it's a grid
| system as in Manhattan, but it is following a grid
| pattern, and the names of the routes on signs and in
| spoken language are like "380 West" "215 North", etc. In
| the interstate system and many state road systems, this
| is reinforced by numbering convention that East/West
| roads are numbered even, while North/South roads are
| numbered odd. None of that exists in Europe.
| eCa wrote:
| > East/West roads are numbered even, while North/South
| roads are numbered odd. None of that exists in Europe.
|
| 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...
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| You can just look at a map over the US and see quickly
| how the grid pattern exists at almost any zoom level. You
| also notice it in how people think about directions. As a
| European I found it tricky to deal with but I saw the
| opposite when Americans drive in Europe. They really
| struggle with a system not built around thinking east-
| west and north-south.
|
| I think generally in Europe people think in terms of
| landmarks rather than fixed directions.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| You'll be told about uphill and downhill for sure.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yes, highly likely. My experience of such is mostly in
| the Canadian prairies, which are sectioned into square
| mile grids.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I started to make a joke about correction lines, but
| couldn't come up with a punchline :-(
| jojobas wrote:
| Surely they don't have built-in compasses, so what would they
| do in an unfamiliar location on an overcast day?
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually I reca reading some interesting studies where they
| found that children from these tribes even after turned
| around blindfolded could readily point out absolute
| directions. I don't recall reading an explanation, but they
| did seem to have a better inherent way of orient themselves
| absolutely.
| playingalong wrote:
| Although possible, this is not happening to them
| frequently. The language hasn't optimized for that use
| case.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a few other languages that do this (as the primary
| version. Most languages mix)[0]. In fact there's 3 main
| classes:
|
| - 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
| wahern wrote:
| FWIW, if you read the literature closely, Kuuk Thaayorre is
| also mixed. They have words for left and right and _use_
| them to describe relative orientation, notwithstanding the
| emphasis on cardinal directions. A related language, Guugu
| Yimithirr, does seem to completely lack use of left and
| right to describe spatial orientation; it has the words--
| similar to Kuuk Thaayorre, words identifying left and right
| hand /arm--but it doesn't extend them figuratively as Kuuk
| Thaayorre does. (They both extend other body-related
| orientation terminology, e.g. to describe being ahead or
| behind something or someone.) However, Guugo Yimithirr
| seems to heavily rely on hand and body gestures to help
| establish relative orientation of the subject or object.
| Reading the literature, I don't think Guugo Yimithirr would
| be capable of adequately conveying direction and
| orientation over the telephone.
|
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| > Alot of the literature also makes hay about these
| language speakers having preternatural skills at
| maintaining a cardinal orientation mentally.
|
| 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.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _theatrical world takes an intermediate approach, where they
| use the terms "stage left / stage right"_
|
| Same for skiers' left and right.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _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._
|
| 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.
| interroboink wrote:
| Your medical comment reminded me of the fascinating
| constellation of terminology used to identify locations and
| orientations in anatomy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location
|
| 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?
| dogmatism wrote:
| the thing that's tricky is basal/apical can be different
| directions: i.e. the base of the lung is at the bottom, the
| base of the left ventricle (in the heart) at the top. You
| have to know the shape of the organ to know. There's also
| cranial/caudal, axial/coronal/sagittal just off the top of my
| head
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| That's some good punning!
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| And dentists talking about tooth faces have buccal (cheek-
| side), lingual (tongue side), occlusal (chewing surface),
| mesial (side closest to center), and distal (the other side
| from mesial).
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Then you have cars, where left/right would make perfect sense
| in all cars from the driver's perspective but instead people
| use "nearside" and "offside" which are relative to the kerb
| _while driving_ [1]. That means it's relative to which side of
| the road the country drives on so if you drive a right-hand-
| drive UK car into mainland Europe, do nearside and offside swap
| on that car and you need to buy differently named replacement
| parts?
|
| 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!
| closewith wrote:
| There's also the convention of inside and outside lanes on
| multilane roads.
|
| 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/i
| nside-l...
| saiya-jin wrote:
| French (maybe its in english too actually, natives could
| comment) say rive gauche and rive droit for which bank of the
| river or lake we talk about. Always taken from perspective of
| river flowing downhill. Makes sense, just takes some time
| getting used to when coming from language which doesnt obsess
| about it that much
| q1w2 wrote:
| This is true in english also. The right/left bank of a river
| is always from the perspective of the water flowing/facing
| downstream.
| matt-attack wrote:
| Interesting. I always assumed "stage left" meant from the
| perspective of looking at the stage.
| scoopr wrote:
| How about always using world relative words?
|
| https://www.naturalnavigator.com/news/2010/09/guugu-yimithir...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I suppose it has to do with how many frames of reference you're
| juggling in a task/profession. With boats, others mentioned
| that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words
| still for "left" and "right" in that frame.
|
| 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".
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own
| frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and
| "right" in that frame._
|
| There's windward (towards/upwind) and leeward
| (away/downwind).
|
| Are there left and right too?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windward_and_leeward
| nickt wrote:
| And the wind itself backs (anti-clockwise) and veers
| (clockwise) with height.
| closewith wrote:
| There's port/starboard tack, where the wind is coming from
| the port/starboard side of the vessel. It can be confusing
| because, for example, if a boat on a port tack tacks to
| port, the result is a starboard tack (once the bow crosses
| the direction from which the wind is blowing).
| hgsgm wrote:
| That has another ambiguity: in wind, directions are
| presumed to be naming the source of the wind, not the
| sink.
| bell-cot wrote:
| After your first few hours on deck in foul weather,
| _that_ one will seem obvious.
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| For wind, you have "lifted" (wind shift that takes you
| closer to your destination) and "headed" (similar but away)
| when going to weather. Downwind, it's a little different as
| the wind just "shifts" and you trim sails or steer to take
| advantage.
| lancefisher wrote:
| What matters to sailors with respect to the wind is the
| angle which it meets the boat or the orientation of the
| boat with regard to the direction of the wind. For that
| there are dedicated names known as the points of sail which
| include: close hauled, close reach, beam reach, broad
| reach, run, and in irons.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_sail
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Good point! :)
|
| 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.
| morcheeba wrote:
| Even without the wind, the separate words help. In crew
| (rowed) boats, people sit backwards. And then boats are
| stored on racks upside-down. It can get complicated!
| sizzle wrote:
| As I suspected from seeing your username over the years, you
| really are knowledgeable on the topic of _temporal_ space and
| orientation :)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_temporal_space
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I'm curious, have you ever played Kerbal Space Program? Or,
| are you familiar with orbital mechanics for a different
| reason? KSP taught me about those terms and familiarized me
| with the concept.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| The convention for orbital spacecraft is that the local
| coordinate system has +z facing whatever it is orbiting and
| +x facing travel direction. Then you can refer to directions
| relative to the spacecraft such as "+x", "-y", etc.
|
| 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.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| That's _a_ convention, but hardly _the_ convention.
|
| 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"
| johnwalkr wrote:
| There are different conventions, yes. Even for the
| shuttle I've seen +z point in the opposite direction in
| some documents. I work in systems engineering so I'm less
| exposed to terms used in operations and more in
| discussions about which part of the spacecraft things are
| located.
|
| 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.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Yeah, operations is kind of where engineering's best
| practices go out the window for practicality haha.
|
| 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.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The space shuttle normally orbited with it's payload
| bay, opposite of the landing gear facing Earth
|
| 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.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| > The doors had to remain open and pointing away from the
| earth
|
| 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-...
| kaapipo wrote:
| In theatrical context, they also use "house left" and "house
| right" for similar effect but with a different perspective
| swader999 wrote:
| At a ski hill, it's skiers left/right so you know it's from
| the reference of someone going down the hill. Drivers side,
| passenger side...
| xnx wrote:
| How much has the ambiguity between right (direction) and right
| (correct) cost the world?
| simonh wrote:
| Left and Right didn't have their modern meaning back then. In
| Old English riht meant straight, as in direct or not bent. It
| later assumed the meaning of correct as in right and wrong.
| Lyft meant weak. Their reference to handedness seems to have
| been incidental. It seems odd to us to talk about the
| 'straight' and 'weak' hand, but to them it made sense, but
| maybe not to talk about the 'straight' or 'weak' sides of a
| boat.
|
| 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".
| abhibeckert wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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).
| jdietrich wrote:
| In the automotive trade, a vehicle has a "driver's side" and
| "passenger side". This only partly solves the ambiguity,
| because of course some countries drive on the left.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Remember, in the US the inside lane is on the left, and in
| the UK the inside lane is on the left.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Inside is where the double yellow is.
| markus92 wrote:
| Double yellow on the road in the UK? You got jokes my
| friend.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Double yellow means parking bay, right?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Commonly referred to as "offside" and "nearside"; terms I
| find confusing. I think the nearside is the side near the
| edge of the road, and the offside is the side near the
| center of the road.
| noduerme wrote:
| I thought it would be difficult when I bought a car in
| Australia to manage shifting with my left hand, but it
| turned out to be surprisingly easy. I had been under the
| impression for some reason that the clutch would be
| controlled with the right foot. Thank God the pedals are in
| the same places.
| glxxyz wrote:
| The first time I drove a manual car back in the UK after
| a few years driving a manual in Canada I went to change
| gear and grabbed the door handle.
| rcme wrote:
| Is 1st gear still in the top left position?
| knifie_spoonie wrote:
| Yes, the shifting pattern is exactly the same.
| mr_toad wrote:
| But usually the wipers and indicator controls are
| reversed, which can be embarrassing.
| acherion wrote:
| And it's not always reversed! Australian-made and
| Japanese-made cars tend to have indicator on the right
| stalk, and wipers on the left. European cars tend to have
| indicators on the left stalk, and wipers on the right.
| But not always!
|
| 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.
| jojobas wrote:
| Blinkers were always on the outside when most cars had
| manual transmissions, the opposite would be very
| inconvenient (and still is). Then somehow Britain didn't
| challenge the EU regulation that indicators must be on
| the left regardless of the driving side. Japanese and
| Korean cars still supply right-hand indicatored-cars to
| Japan, Australia and New Zealand, yet left-indicatored to
| the UK, go figure, European ones don't give a shit, so
| buyers of BMWs and MBs suffer (or enjoy?) being
| incompatible with the rest.
| [deleted]
| acherion wrote:
| The indicator should be on the outside, so you can change
| gear (in a manual transmission car) and indicate at the
| same time. It's just common sense.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| alibarber wrote:
| Coming from the UK to Aus / NZ I was feeling smug ;) -
| but of course, this caught me out.
|
| 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.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It's not a UK thing (which side the indicator stem is),
| it's a manufacturer thing.
|
| 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 ...
| atorodius wrote:
| Lohe this. Reminded me of the wild complexity in our
| global society
| leipert wrote:
| Sibling comment mentions indicators and wipers being
| switched.
|
| 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.
| ace2358 wrote:
| It gets even worse when some cars put the indicator shaft
| on the left of the steering wheel and others put it on
| the right haha
| abenga wrote:
| The wiper thing is marque dependent, even within
| countries. I live in East Africa, drive on the left.
| German cars (I've driven a few) seem to have wiper stalks
| on the right and indicator control on the left. Toyotas
| (and I guess other Japanese cars) I've driven have it on
| the opposite side. Whenever I drive a friend's car, I
| always hit the wipers a few times at the beginning of a
| trip before I acclimatize.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Pamure roundabout and Royal Oak roundabouts in Auckland
| are interesting.
|
| Royal Oak has an ice cream parlour with a good view of
| the carnage.
| dotancohen wrote:
| As a speaker of a Right-To-Left language, I see this all
| the time in software. Some software change the UI
| direction when switching to Hebrew, some don't. And
| culturally, it seems that Arabic users _do_ prefer the UI
| to be switched, but Hebrew users do not.
| [deleted]
| lostlogin wrote:
| Far too new for an Australian purist. It's three on the
| tree thank you.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Yeah, it's a relief to discover that the driver's cockpit
| (for lack of a better term) is just moved side-to-side
| wholesale and not flipped -- EXCEPT for the shifter,
| which remains in the middle.
|
| 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?
| gav wrote:
| If you're giving directions to somebody driving, like when
| reversing into a tricky spot, you can tell them to "turn
| driver" or "turn passenger" so there's no ambiguity.
| omegabravo wrote:
| I've heard the term "left hand down", aka turn left but
| much more explicit.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Why not simply "counterclockwise"?
| rantallion wrote:
| Depends. Are you referring to the rotation of the wheel
| or of the car? While I've never heard it used before, the
| post to which you're replying avoids that ambiguity.
| Steve44 wrote:
| In the UK I was taught off-side and near side which
| referred to the sides nearest and away from the kerb as you
| are driving. That would be localised to which side of the
| road your location drives on, but not affected by left or
| right hand drive.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Fradow wrote:
| It's a whole lot of weirdness, especially since most
| interactions in English language on the internet will be
| with either US or UK people.
|
| 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.
| numbsafari wrote:
| This is how I refer to my dog's legs/paws... eg, driver
| side rear would be his back left leg.
|
| He's a sport sedan, so it applies.
| midasuni wrote:
| Near side and off side
| Lio wrote:
| An interesting thing to note is how this affects the
| control sticks on a car.
|
| 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...
|
| -
|
| 0. Let's just ignore elephant in the room for now.
| danielvf wrote:
| For stage directions there's also "House Left" and "House
| Right", which are from the perspective of the audience.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I've heard it referred to as "Audience Left" and "Audience
| Right", though I'm not in the industry.
| blahlabs wrote:
| And in broadcast it can be referred to as 'Camera Left' and
| 'Camera Right', which is also from the audience
| perspective.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| The camera's perspective. Audience perspective could be
| mediated by coarse special effects such as reflecting or
| turning the image.
| rcthompson wrote:
| The advantage of using separate words for the frame of
| reference of the boat is that you can still use left and right
| with their normal meanings as well.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| "It'll be starboard side, hung up on the left."
| usrbinbash wrote:
| But I can also say:
|
| "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.
| rcthompson wrote:
| "Left side of the boat" is a lot more syllables than
| "port". And using different words makes it less likely that
| the listener will be confused by multiple uses of the same
| word to mean different things.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| As I was reading your comment I was thinking "huh, that's
| interesting." But then I remembered: surfers use left/right as
| well, for instance if a wave breaks right or left. They use the
| perspective of being in the ocean and looking back at the
| shore, as opposed to the shore looking out to the ocean. I
| remember asking that very question when I first started.
| bckygldstn wrote:
| > stage left / stage right
|
| 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!
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| I hear skiers left/right or looker's left/right often.
| Usually looker's is said while on the lift or the base of the
| mountain.
| themeiguoren wrote:
| Climber's right doesn't make sense to me as distinguished
| from looker's right, since both perform the named activity
| facing the slope.
| atoav wrote:
| As a camera operator or director I always tended to use "your
| left/right", "my left/right" or "camera left/right". The first
| two made their way into my everyday speak as well.
| HPsquared wrote:
| If you're inside a ship, it's often hard to say what way around
| you are: "left" and "right" have utility for the perspective of
| a person onboard. Port and starboard are the onboard equivalent
| of North/South/East/West when walking on land, especially if
| you're inside a building with no windows for external
| reference.
|
| This is unlike for a doctor, where it's obvious which side is
| which: you can see the patient.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| > you can see the patient.
|
| Often not true. In any sort of imaging it can be ambiguous
| what way the patient is facing
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Yup. Port and starboard, along with forward and aft are in
| reference to the center-line of the ship from the perspective
| of being aft and looking forward. Looking at a top down of
| the ship from where forward and the forecastle are up, it is
| left (port) and right (starboard).
| lostlogin wrote:
| > 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.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Shouldn't doctors simply use the Greek or Latin words for
| left and right?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Latin: _sinister_ and _dexter_ , I think they are used
| for parts of organs (eg liver); one source notes _occulus
| sinister_ being used in the abbreviation OS for left eye.
|
| 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.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The "left-side are unlucky" thing affects the Latin
| example as well as the Greek, at the very least in the
| way that English derived words get used: compare
| "dexterous" (modern English connotations of "able,
| agile") versus "sinister" (modern English connotations of
| "evil, subversive").
|
| 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.)
| eloisant wrote:
| I don't know, when you're talking about "the right arm", it
| seems obvious that it's the patient's right arm and not the
| arm that you see on your right when you're looking at the
| patient. I don't think you need to go to medical school to
| understand that.
| chuddington wrote:
| [dead]
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Assumptions like this is how errors are made.
|
| Don't make assumptions, codify it.
| [deleted]
| rprospero wrote:
| You're right that "the left lung" should obviously be the
| lung on the patient's left. However, can you look at the
| image below and immediately identify which is the "left"
| lung?
|
| https://scratch.rprosperoglobal.duckdns.org/lungs.png
| adql wrote:
| ...you just expect random readers to know how lung looks
| on (i assume) MRI, from (I assume) top ?
|
| 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
| lostlogin wrote:
| I think I can, maybe. However I'm a radiographer and
| pictures like this are my job.
|
| 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.
| rprospero wrote:
| I fully agree with you. I was mostly posting as an
| example that "left is the patient's left" is not
| sufficient without other standards (like image
| orientation).
| lostlogin wrote:
| And that went straight over my head.
|
| Your point was well made.
| blowski wrote:
| It's obvious 99% of the time, but that 1% equates to a
| lot of fatal errors.
| ajeet_dhaliwal wrote:
| It just seems like an old convention that has stuck, seem'm
| much simpler to anyone not familiar with ships to say 'ships
| left' or 'ships right' than to have new words. We don't do
| this with cars. You have a left rear door, not a port rear
| door.
| modernerd wrote:
| > We don't do this with cars. You have a left rear door,
| not a port rear door.
|
| "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.
| theiz wrote:
| If you ever went 4x4 driving, you use driver / passenger
| to indicate the direction someone has to go to. This is
| because the navigation often is done from someone
| standing outside the car, where using left/right can be
| rather confusing.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| In UK a [experienced, older?] driver gives another driver
| instructions with "right hand down" and "left hand down".
| That is, you give directions to move the steering wheel.
|
| 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??
| HPsquared wrote:
| For repair instructions this actually causes a lot of
| confusion for someone in a right hand drive market. Half
| the time the repair instruction gets it wrong and would
| have been better saying left or right. Occasionally it is
| correct though if dealing with a part that's different in
| each market.
| philo23 wrote:
| I guess some could argue that we do have some special
| vocabulary for cars too.
|
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _though that probably is stretching the definition of a
| door a little bit..._
|
| 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.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| I think it makes sense for hatchbacks, where there's no
| real trunk/passenger cabin separation.
| vel0city wrote:
| The trunk is considered a door when it opens into the
| main cabin instead of a separate compartment.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I always get confused by nearside and offside. Is it
| "near to the driver" or "near to the roadside"?
| beardyw wrote:
| Near the roadside.
| chewxy wrote:
| Cars are small and for the most part everyone in the car
| faces the same direction as the car itself. When you have a
| ship, you have 3 frames of references to contend with
| (self, ship, cardinal)
| sergiosgc wrote:
| Four, actually. You also have the wind frame of
| reference, which is actually the most important (for sail
| boats). You don't turn left or right, you turn upwind or
| downwind.
| HPsquared wrote:
| For wind there is leeward (downwind) and windward
| (upwind). I don't think there are common terms for the 2
| crosswind directions though?
| lostlogin wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I have heard stories of patients, entirely on their own,
| using black markers to indicate which leg/arm was to be
| operated upon. Surgeons are entirely OK with this. They
| appreciate it. I also heard a legend of a patient who
| themselves marked the wrong leg. This wasn't discovered until
| after sedation. The procedure was canceled until everything
| was clarified.
|
| 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.
| devilbunny wrote:
| The surgeon has no issue with it because it is essentially
| universal policy in the US (don't know about other
| countries but can't imagine they don't have similar) that
| the surgeon _must_ , prior to sedation, mark the surgical
| site _themselves_ and put their initials on it. Exceptions
| are made for cases where there isn 't a "side" (you only
| have one gall bladder), or where the wound is "obvious", or
| for exploratory surgeries where the actual site of all
| injuries is not yet known.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The letter being revered is a way of indicating if the beam
| went from the back to front (posterior to anterior) PA or
| front to back, AP.
|
| 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.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Is this the story of how someone ended up with one less
| appendix than they should have?
| jdmichal wrote:
| People only have one appendix to start with. Did you mean
| appendage?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| No, that's what I meant, but said in a facetious way. If
| someone is complaining about lower right abdominal pain
| that could be the appendix, when lower left would not be.
| bell-cot wrote:
| _Unless_ the patient is one of the 0.01% -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situs_inversus
| jdmichal wrote:
| Ah I get it now. Sorry for the density.
| xpe wrote:
| Don't apologize; we all benefit from a good chuckle.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Perhaps they have -1 now.
|
| Either that or my recent C excursions have me thinking in
| buffer overruns and index errors.
| OJFord wrote:
| That would be _two_ less than they should have? Unless
| you 're commenting on its uselessness that they 'should'
| have zero despite one being normal?
| jdmichal wrote:
| Last I heard, there's an idea that it might help
| recolonize the gut with good flora after infections and
| such.
| xpe wrote:
| The official record _books_ will now show that patient is
| officially the first to lose an _appendix_ but gain a
| _preface_.
| tomxor wrote:
| That's a particularly strange kind of overthinking,
| implicitly acknowledging the medical field is complex enough
| to consult a professional, and yet thinking something as
| common and (relatively) simple as interpreting left/right
| from patient descriptions hasn't already been considered.
|
| 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.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| As I said elsewhere, but I think it's worth repeating here
| - 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Until you call a doctor in the UK.
| jen20 wrote:
| To whit, having learned to drive on the left, the "easy"
| turn that does not cross traffic is always a "left" turn
| to me, regardless of living in a country that drives on
| the right. Makes giving directions to others quite
| interesting.
| KMag wrote:
| I learned to drive in the US, but lived over 10 years in
| Hong Kong, and have driven in New Zealand and South
| Africa.
|
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I drove a Japanese car in NL traffic and whenever I had
| to downshift for turns in the first couple of hours after
| switching cars my right hand would slam into the door :)
| amalcon wrote:
| I just try to prepend "my". It's usually natural to do
| this anyway ("my left knee" e.g.) but can always be done
| ("I fell to my left" instead of "I fell to the left").
| quartesixte wrote:
| And then you get a doctor from Japan!
| tomxor wrote:
| That's country specific, maybe you should use port and
| starboard.
|
| 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.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| It reminds me of a lot of hackernews comments on technical
| topics from non-software fields.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Only on HN would the domain of "technical topics" be
| constrained to software.
| hanoz wrote:
| _> 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._
|
| 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?
| antognini wrote:
| Yes. As a random example, you'll see that although the lungs
| are seen from the perspective of a doctor facing a patient,
| they are labelled left/right from the patient's perspective:
| https://www.therespiratorysystem.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017...
| zarzavat wrote:
| The reason is that when a patient comes to a doctor they
| will say they have a pain in their left side, without
| further qualification. So it makes sense to center the
| entire terminology around that situation. Otherwise doctors
| would constantly be having to do error-prone conversions.
| kqr wrote:
| Well, that and also doctors can walk around patients they
| are examining, e.g. auscultation of the lungs on the
| back.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Doctors examine patients?
|
| I thought they just sent them to radiology?
| beefield wrote:
| I think the principle is pretty pervasive also outside
| medicals. I do not recall anyone ever refer to my left hand
| as right hand (other than maybe by mistake), regardless how
| they are oriented around me.
| kgwgk wrote:
| After all, doctors are humans and also have a body. It would
| be strange for them to write books saying that the heart is
| [#] on the right side when they have it on their left, etc.
|
| [%] usually, because this is HN
| tareqak wrote:
| Would using the phrases "patient-left" and "patient-right"
| improve outcomes in the case of operating on the wrong side of
| the body?
| yafbum wrote:
| In medicine there is one obviously very important perspective,
| and in theatre two. But mariners still need words for relative
| left and right directions all around them, like "the preferred
| channel is to the left of the buoy" (the channel and the buoy
| don't have port or starboard sides, and it wouldn't be useful
| to communicate about their relative angle as seen by the boat's
| crew).
| manarth wrote:
| > the channel and the buoy don't have port or starboard sides
|
| 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.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| But be careful, because there are two configurations for
| lateral marks, called Region A and Region B, as defined by
| IALA.
|
| 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.
| midasuni wrote:
| Red right returning
| manarth wrote:
| A nice, solid, memorable rule, which works all the time.
| Just like "I before E except after C".
|
| Except when weird species seize their feisty foreign
| neighbours.
| mhandley wrote:
| >like "the preferred channel is to the left of the buoy"
|
| 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.
| yafbum wrote:
| Same in the US. But only if you were actually going there,
| not if you're just describing what's around you!
| qwertox wrote:
| > in medical school is that left/right always refer to the
| patient's perspective.
|
| 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.
| adql wrote:
| Your left hand doesn't turn into your right hand if you lie
| on the bed different way
| qwertox wrote:
| I am aware of this. But oftentimes patients are completely
| covered by a green blanked with the exception of a small
| space of skin. I just thought that this could cause some
| confusion.
| bearmode wrote:
| The patient's left and patient's right are always going to be
| the same, regardless of which way the patient is facing.
| It'll change it from the doctor's perspective, but that's
| irrelevant since you're only looking at it from the
| patient's.
| ioseph wrote:
| Some medical terms become hugely helpful when receiving a
| massage: "more medial, more lateral"
| azepoi wrote:
| In french theatre has specific words for left and right. Cote
| cour et Cote jardin. Courtside and garden side.
|
| In geography left and right banks of a river are always in the
| direction of the flow
| dotancohen wrote:
| > 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.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There are surely more than one, but this happens only close
| to the sea and the general flow of the river is still into
| the sea.
| saalweachter wrote:
| The Hudson River is tidal up past Poughkeepsie.
| jefftk wrote:
| Farther than that! It's tidal past _Albany_ and only
| fully stops at the dam in Troy.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River
| seszett wrote:
| Even where it happens (it's common, the cases I know
| personally are Nantes or Antwerp) it's still obvious which
| side is right and which side is left, it's simply according
| to the main flow of the river.
|
| 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).
| Steve44 wrote:
| The Thames is tidal in London so the water does 'flow' both
| ways, but I'm fairly sure you'd say it flows towards the
| river but London is on a tidal section.
| Someone wrote:
| Tides coming in is normal, but there are rivers that change
| direction for other reasons. The Chicago River and the
| Mississippi can change direction due to storm surges, for
| example (for the Chicago River, that temporarily returns it
| to its flow direction, into Lake Michigan
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Course))
|
| 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 Tonle
| 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 Tonle Sap then reverses and began to
| replenish the flow of the Mekong."_
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| When kayaking, I'd have referred to the banks as "river left"
| and "river right" to mean the same thing.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Which makes for some very confusing situations when the river
| is twisty. There are different places in New Orleans where
| the West Bank is south of you, west of you, and east of you.
| dmurray wrote:
| That's exactly because they didn't follow the convention.
| If they called it the Right Bank, it would always be clear
| which side that was if you could identify the flow of the
| river.
| public_defender wrote:
| Ironically that city's four cardinal directions of
| "Uptown," "Downtown," "Lakeside," and "Riverside" are
| completely unambiguous.
| batiudrami wrote:
| Rail uses "up" and "down main" where up is in the direction
| of the port or main terminus.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| In Germany it's just direction "a" (kilometrage increasing)
| and direction "b" (kilometrage decreasing), though I think
| that usage isn't quite as prominent as Up/Down is in the UK
| and UK-influenced countries. In Romania AFAIK they're
| calling them direction "X" and direction "Y" instead.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| In one of Tim Snyders Yale lectures on Ukrainian history,
| goes overboard about the left bank/right bank in respect of
| the Dniepro. The river runs north to south, so the right bank
| is basically the west. I strongly suspect he has trouble
| telling his left from his right; I've read an essay in which
| there is a map with a small patch of Russia (coloured red) in
| the bottom-left, but the caption says it's bottom-right.
|
| 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.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| I remember some time ago Cisco Nexus equipment that had
| different catalog definitions in the NX series
| (2000/5000/7000/9000) of the Air Intake definitions of where
| the "Front" was in a Front to Back fan setup. You literally had
| to order skus with conflicting descriptions if you wanted a
| consistent system.
| kuon wrote:
| In french, on stage, it's "cour" (stage left) and "jardin"
| (stage right), meanings yard and garden.
| butterknife wrote:
| We also use "house left/house right" to describe the audience
| perspective.
| niccl wrote:
| And sometimes you get Prompt Side and Opposite Prompt, which
| are _usually_ stage left and stage right respectively, but it
| depends on the theatre, with some having the prompt on the
| stage right.
| jjav wrote:
| > Though that's far from the only case where there's a special
| word for something on a boat.
|
| 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.
| petersellers wrote:
| It's also pretty cool that a ton of sailing vocabulary has
| made its way into common English vernacular. I guess with the
| UK being the most powerful country in the world at one time
| (and projecting their power via their Navy) it's not too
| surprising.
| walthamstow wrote:
| What are some examples? I am English but I know nothing
| about the maritime world, so I likely know the words as
| slang/vernacular terms but not what they mean on a ship.
| tudorw wrote:
| bow, boom, tack, hitch, tiller, helm, etc :)
| endtime wrote:
| How many of these have common non-nautical uses? I don't
| think I ever use any of these terms, or hear anyone else
| use them, in common speech.
| jrockway wrote:
| "at the helm" seems like common usage to me. Maybe not in
| the top 100 idioms, but everyone knows what you mean.
|
| "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.)
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Tiller was popular at least in the 1960s - see the Cat
| Stevens/Yousef album "Tea for the Tillerman"
| willyt wrote:
| I think they sometimes call the thing that steers the
| nose wheel the tiller.
| jrockway wrote:
| Yup, you're exactly right. I totally forgot about that.
| Thinking about it more, the rudder and tiller might be
| different things on ships too; I think a rudder you turn
| right to go right, and a tiller you turn left to go
| right, because of where the pivot point is?
|
| It's a good thing I'm not at the helm ;)
| xfz wrote:
| Generally agree although there's a case for "taking a
| different tack".
| dagw wrote:
| I hear people use "at the helm" and "change tack" to mean
| being in charge of something and changing direction or
| approach, respectively. People also "hitch themselves" to
| things, although I'm not sure that comes directly from
| the nautical usage.
| almostarockstar wrote:
| A "hitch" knot is typically used to fasten around a fixed
| object. So you might use a hitch to tie the boat to the
| shore, or tie a line around a wooden (or these days
| aluminium or carbon fibre) boom. I'm not sure if it's
| purely nautical.
| PJ_Maybe wrote:
| One I like is the phrase "the tell-tale signs", which
| refers to a sailing boat's tell-tales. These are small
| strings attached to the sails to indicate if the sail
| needs to be trimmed for optimal performance.
| carlmr wrote:
| I always just imagined that it was signs that tell a
| tale. And the online etymology dictionary seems to
| confirm that.
|
| 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?
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Quite a lot of folk etymology tries to, incorrectly,
| assign nautical origins to common words and phrases. I
| used to read a column by an etymologist that jokingly
| referred to this using the term CANOE - the Committee to
| Assign a Nautical Origin to Everything :-)
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I'll go with "anchor".
| OJFord wrote:
| To rig something up, to go overboard, to leave something
| in your wake.
| rapnie wrote:
| Let's go full steam ahead, and dredge up some more.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _steam_
|
| That's the hallmark of industrialization, right there :).
|
| In case anyone thinks the important bits stopped at the
| age of sail.
| chii wrote:
| It's interesting that farming/agriculture and sailing
| both have left the legacy of their words into the
| language. It goes to show how important these industries
| are to civilization.
| OJFord wrote:
| The sheer number of people (thinking particularly
| historically, pre-industrialisation) involved in them I
| suppose.
| coldtea wrote:
| The most important ones? Without internet we could live a
| cushy little 20th century existance.
|
| Without farming/sailing we'd go 20000 years back
| nostromo wrote:
| A toilet on a boat is called a head because it was
| historically placed at the front of the boat.
|
| You'll still hear folks say "hit the head" referring to
| using the restroom.
| Macha wrote:
| Regional usage maybe? Never heard that expression in my
| life
| gerad wrote:
| And it was put at the front of the boat because that was
| downwind of everything else on a wind powered boat.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I'm not sure that is true, sure the tacking angle of old
| boat was nowhere close to modern boats, but I would be
| surprised if they couldnt sail up wind.
| sergiosgc wrote:
| You never sail at 0 degrees upwind. When going upwind,
| the angle is about 30 degrees minimum. Closer than that
| and you can't inflate the main sail, thus get no power.
|
| 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.
| pmontra wrote:
| To go upwind you need a keel (viking ships did) or
| something that prevents the wind to push the ship away
| [1]. Sailing against the wind was very important for
| battle ships. What we have now compared to them is better
| materials and centuries of improved design which turned
| into tacking closer to the wind and much better
| maneuverability. We can change direction in a very short
| space. However our sailing boats are much smaller, closer
| to the viking ships than to the galleons [2]
|
| [1]
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/56264/when-
| did-h...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleon
| nicky0 wrote:
| Have a read (or listen to the brilliantly read audiobook)
| of Master and Commander, and the subsequent series of
| novels by Patrick O'Brien. Apart from being entertaining
| historical novels, you learn a lot about naval life and
| terminology. Reading them I am struck by just how much
| nautical lingo made its way into common English usage.
| bouvin wrote:
| Having read the _excellent_ series in English, it was
| amusing for me to see the movie in a Danish cinema, where
| the incomprehensible English maritime jargon was
| translated to incomprehensible Danish maritime jargon.
| aequitas wrote:
| I'd also recommend watching The Terror (season 1) and
| play Return of the Obra Dinn. Though both contain fantasy
| elements, there's lots of nautical lore to be found.
| drpixie wrote:
| And if you like the O'Brien books, read the C.S. Forester
| "Horatio Hornblower" books - historically & nautically
| accurate and very readable.
| chongli wrote:
| 3 sheets to the wind -- meaning drunk -- comes from
| sailing. A sheet is a rope used to control a sail. Sheets
| that are "to the wind" are loose (rather than tied down)
| so a ship with 3 sheets to the wind is going to be
| completely out of control and at the mercy of the wind,
| wandering all over the sea like a drunk person!
| swiftcoder wrote:
| https://www.boatsafe.com/easy-guide-talking-salty/
| almostarockstar wrote:
| Leeway: The "lee" is the area downwind of a vessel. A
| lee-shore is a shoreline that the wind blows on to, as
| opposed to a windward shore that the wind blows off. To
| give leeway is to allow enough room for a vessel to be
| blown off course by the wind and avoid danger.
|
| 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.
| blackshaw wrote:
| The "posh" one is commonly repeated, but there's no
| evidence it's true:
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/posh#etymonline_v_18515
| unwind wrote:
| That is pretty cool!
|
| Swedish (also picking a lot from German, of course) has
| the same word ("la", and no I'm not going to try to
| describe the pronunciation) but our usage is wider in
| scope. In Swedish la is simply "out of the wind", and not
| restricted to use onboard a vessel. Cool, didn't know
| that about English.
| ttepasse wrote:
| I too doubt the posh etymology: If you're sailing around
| the cape by definition you will have crossed the equator
| twice, meaning your calculation of the sun positions will
| change. Acronyms pronounces as words seem more a modern
| 20th century thing.
|
| 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.
| Dobbs wrote:
| Leeway is another common one.
| jjav wrote:
| > What are some examples?
|
| 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.
| Steve44 wrote:
| You could start by learning the ropes.
| munificent wrote:
| A truly huge number of nautical terms have entered normal
| parlance. Some are so deeply engrained that we don't even
| realize they were originally nautical metaphors.
| Examples:
|
| * 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.
| closewith wrote:
| If your code is anything like mine, it might be junk, a
| term for worn rope.
| QuantumYeti wrote:
| "by and large" and "taken aback" are another couple
| examples.
| mjlee wrote:
| There are some we use in tech every day. The word log (as
| in logbook/log file) comes from a literal log that was
| thrown overboard to estimate the speed of the ship for
| navigation.
|
| 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.
| yobbo wrote:
| Not quite; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log
|
| Not obvious what it originally meant.
| chewxy wrote:
| In Malaysian/Singaporean English there's a term: gostan
| (read "go stun"), which means to reverse. I was curious
| about it's etymology and went to research it. It came
| from "go astern", with "astern" being the back of a ship.
| I imagine this must be a phrase the English speaking
| colonists must have used quite a lot in the 17th century
| bottled_poe wrote:
| This reminds me of the design of aircraft cockpits. Controls
| are deliberately designed to look and feel different so they
| cannot be easily confused (in itself a lesson for UI/UX
| design) - something which has caused aviation incidents in
| aircraft which have had consistently designed controls.
| narrator wrote:
| One interesting thing about middle ages technologies, like
| boats, is that the words in the different romance languages
| for things invented in this era are very different from each
| other. For example, in Spanish boat words like port and
| starboard are totally different[1]. Other examples of middle
| ages words that are very different: windmill = molino,
| wheelbarrow = carretilla.
|
| 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...
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| However in peninsular Spanish, computer = ordenador, the
| loan word is the French "ordinateur".
| ekianjo wrote:
| Mexican spanish should not be the reference for what is
| said in spanish
| aae42 wrote:
| Why not?
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/991020/number-native-
| spa...
| ekianjo wrote:
| because numbers don't matter. Just like Quebecois would
| not be the reference for the French language, even if it
| somehow outgrew the French speaking population in France
| bee_rider wrote:
| Mexico & USA, language taking over buddies. We just need
| to grow Quebec, so we can get the full set over here.
| Long way to go, though...
| pmontra wrote:
| Molino is mulino in Italian. Ancient Greek and Latin had
| similar words starting with mol-. Given the importance of
| that technology I'm not surprised that the word didn't
| change much. English' mill is also close to the romance
| languages. [1]
|
| 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".
|
| [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mill#Etymology_1
| anthk wrote:
| Babor y estribor in Spanish. In Spanish we used to say
| "siniestra", now we say "izquierda", a loanword from
| Basque 'ezkerra'.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Babord is port in Norwegian. But starboard is styrbord
| which makes a lot of sense because the steering board, or
| oar, is on the steersman's right side.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Babord is also used in French
| stefncb wrote:
| We use "tribord" and "babord" in romanian.
| oesexe wrote:
| Danish as well. I didn't see it mentioned, so I will add:
| that back then, a ship could not moor along the key on
| starboard/styrbord side. So it had to be the other side:
| hence the English port side.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Cheese is an interesting one - I would expect Spanish to
| share the word with French and Italian but it's actually
| closer to English and Dutch.
|
| French fromage Italian formagio
|
| Spanish queso English cheese Dutch kaas
|
| Languages are so weird :)
| dendriti wrote:
| This tracks, actually - Spain (or Spanish monarchs) ruled
| the Netherlands for over 170 years.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That doesn't appear to be related. The word is not
| Germanic; Spanish is using the word it inherited from
| Latin, while English and Dutch are using the same word,
| borrowed from Latin.
|
| 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.
| marvin wrote:
| In the case of cheese, I've had a long-running discussion
| with French extended family regarding exactly what the
| words refer to. Norwegian 'cheese' = 'ost', and we refer
| to the brown cheese produced by boiling and solidifying
| the left-over whey fluid from cheese production as
| 'brunost'; 'brown cheese'. This product is important in
| cultures where food security and calories are held at a
| premium.
|
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > the Germanic words stemming from 'kase', referring to
| caseine
|
| 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.)
| soylentcola wrote:
| Is this why cheese (I believe via Roman Latin) is also
| 'cacio'?
|
| I'm only familiar due to 'cacio a pepe'.
| marvin wrote:
| 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. My hobby searches in this area have led me to
| conclude that etymology isn't a hard science, and
| ultimately one will arrive at someone's qualified opinion
| about something.
|
| 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?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Why does the French word derive from shape, if the
| Romans already had a word for cheese?
|
| 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, caese, 5 schese, 6
| chease, cheise, chiese, ches, 2-6 chese, 4, 6- cheese.
| [OE. (Anglian) _cese_ , (WSax.) * _ciese_ , _cyse_ (with
| i- umlaut from _ceasi_ , _caesi_ ) = OHG. _chasi_ (MHG.
| _kaese_ , Ger. _kase_ ), OLG. _kasi_ , _kesi_ (MDu.
| _kase_ , Du. _kaas_ ):--WGer. * _kasi_ , ad. L. _case-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.t
| ufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _the dictionary translation of words does not capture
| somewhat-subtle but sometimes important distinctions
| between words_
|
| 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"
| mejutoco wrote:
| In Spain the computer is el ordenador. Port and starboard
| are babor y estribor (similar to French).
|
| I think it is more about who introduced these words.
| Etymology is fascinating.
| mattigames wrote:
| In the 90s in Colombia (perhaps all LATAM) we used
| "ordenador" but quickly fell out of use in favor of
| "computador", now only few old people occasionally call
| it "ordenador" in this country.
| copperx wrote:
| Really? in French, starboard is tribord, and in Spanish,
| it's estribor. Port is babord, and in Spanish, it's babor.
|
| How are they different?
| russellbeattie wrote:
| In Spain a computer is an ordenador. Spaniards hate
| anglicisms. Car is coche, not carro, email is correo
| electronico, zipper is cremallera. Lots of others.
| anthk wrote:
| We use email too in Spain. It's shorter. And parking
| instead of "estacionamiento".
|
| Also, we used to use computador/computadora in the old
| times (60's/70's).
| ekianjo wrote:
| Is carro used more in Mexico then ?
| qtzfz wrote:
| Carro is not used in Spain at all.
| anthk wrote:
| It's used, but for the old ones with horses.
| el-salvador wrote:
| > It's used, but for the old ones with horses.
|
| 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.
| jjav wrote:
| > 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?
| anthk wrote:
| [dead]
| qtzfz wrote:
| [dead]
| el-salvador wrote:
| https://www.speakinglatino.com/spanish-language-words-
| for-dr...
| qtzfz wrote:
| Exactly, but don't ask Manolo Escobar about it, since
| it's somewhat of a sensitive issue for him.
| SilasX wrote:
| Similar for computadora (rather than ordenador) in Latin
| America:
|
| https://www.woodwardspanish.com/how-to-say-computer-
| spanish-...
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Lots more Galicisms in Spain for sure :) probably easier
| to share words when you also share a land border.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| Do Spanish-speaking and French-speaking areas actually
| share a border? I thought there was a buffer zone of
| Catalan and Basque. I'll need to check a map.
|
| On checking, it looks like there is a short (but very
| mountainous) border: https://maps-spain.com/maps-spain-
| geography/spain-language-m...
| qtzfz wrote:
| Don't be mislead by that map, everybody in those regions
| that say "Basque" or "Catalan" know Spanish perfectly
| well.
| [deleted]
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| English car comes from Latin, actually, but Latin picked
| it up from Celtic (cf. Breton karr).
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/car
| xxs wrote:
| >ordenador
|
| you mean unlike French?
| jjav wrote:
| > in Spanish boat words like port and starboard are totally
| different
|
| 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > windmill = molino
|
| 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.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| and Italian "il mulino"... it all comes from Latin
| "molinum" for the mill (and "mola" for the grind stone
| used in mills)
| yobbo wrote:
| The name of Thor's hammer "mjolnir" (as english speakers
| would see it) did not come through latin though, so the
| version of the word in germanic languages was inherited
| independently.
|
| "Mjolnir" means something like "crusher" and the noun
| "mjol" (flour) means "having been ground up". For
| example, it can be combined as vetemjol (wheat flour) or
| stenmjol (ground stone or stone powder).
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > the noun "mjol" (flour) means "having been ground up"
|
| Ah - "mjol" as flour must be cognate with "meal". I
| hadn't previously associated meal with mills, but it
| makes sense.
| hnbad wrote:
| As another data point: meal/flour is "Mehl" in German.
| Mehl/meal is milled in a Muhle/mill.
| vidarh wrote:
| Meal appears to be a cognate of Old Norse "mal" ("mal",
| "maltid" - meal, meal time - in modern Norwegian) rather
| than mjol. Compare also Mehl (flour) vs Mahl (meal) in
| German.
| NeoTar wrote:
| An in German - Muhle... in fact the English Mill is
| pretty close too!
| stratosgear wrote:
| And in Greek: mulos. With latin characters: milos. So it
| seems the root of the word is the same...
| pezezin wrote:
| Yes, "molino" is just mill. Windmill would be "molino de
| viento" and watermill "molino de agua".
| roveo wrote:
| I imagine this word should be of Indoeuropean origin,
| Eastern Slav words for a mill also contain m-l-n (e.g.
| melnitsa).
|
| Modern English lost the "n" part, but it was present in
| Middle English, milne.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| yes, it's "mlin" or "mlyn" in a number of Slavic
| languages, and I just looked up it's etymology in Serbian
| and the book says it comes from old slavic "m'lin'" which
| they say comes from the Latin root "molinum"
| pantulis wrote:
| Just a point, "starboard" sounds pretty similar to
| "estribor".
| mudita wrote:
| The German theatre world developed the opposite convention,
| "Buhne links" (literally "stage left") means left from the
| perspective of the audience.
|
| 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.
| blantonl wrote:
| Some other persepctives:
|
| "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.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Another is the right/left bank of a river always refers to
| the perspective of the water flowing/facing downstream.
| xpe wrote:
| > "Skier's left/right" for snow skiing. Ambiguity arises when
| looking uphill or downhill.
|
| 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.
| wlonkly wrote:
| > The theatrical world takes an intermediate approach, where
| they use the terms "stage left / stage right",
|
| The opposite of that, rarely used but still out there, is house
| left/house right.
| dsego wrote:
| Afaik, this is not the case in all other languages to have
| specific nautical terms for sides. I asked a sailor friend for
| the terminology in our language and it's just left side and
| right side/flank, seems pretty self explanatory, by convention
| you are orienting forwards. Like any profession though, having
| specific terminology helps distinguish from the outside group
| and maintain impression of expertise.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > seems pretty self explanatory
|
| 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.
| dsego wrote:
| > you can qite easily lose track of which direction is the
| prow
|
| 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.
| mwsfc wrote:
| I would venture a guess the logic in some of these cases has a
| healthy does of practical wisdom baked in. On sailing vessels
| they are/were? chaotic, violent, noisy, and the crew perhaps
| wasn't the most experienced/educated(?) so keeping things
| simple with fixed names was perhaps the optimal safety solution
| in that environment. In the medical profession it's about the
| Hippocratic Oath (I am not a doctor), an operating room is more
| controlled, and everyone (is usually) well trained, so maybe in
| that environment it makes more sense to make a rule that the
| perspective should always be the patients? Thinking out loud
| here more than anything...
| dghughes wrote:
| It's easy to remember (if you have to) what side port is since
| port has four letters just like left.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| If you stand with your front to the captain, you're right is his
| left.
|
| That's why.
| otikik wrote:
| My brother in law works in building airplanes. Since a lot of the
| big pieces are mirrors of each other, the factories themselves
| are divided into two "sides". In Spain they are called Left and
| Right, but in the UK they use the maritime terms instead.
| [deleted]
| foreverobama wrote:
| [dead]
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