This question is occasioned by my reading again Patrick O’Brian’s The Surgeon’s Mate * where a British naval vessel, circa 1813, is wrecked on the French shore when a British naval officer, who suffers from left-right-confusion, at a critical juncture shouts the order
*Larboard all! - I mean starboard*
My question here: Is there something here that I, as a phonologically deficient L2 speaker of English, do not get about English pronounciation?
My impression is that the old term larboard (since displaced by port) seems designed to wreck ships, because it is very easily misheard in a high-noise, high-stress situaltion as starboard.
Or is there something that I do not get here, and the word is in fact not easily misheard?
*) Question posted under Factual Questions rather that Café Society because it is not about that work of fiction but rather about the pronounciation of words.
Yes, I believe that you are correct. The OED shows the same vowel sound in the first syllable of “starboard” and “larboard”. This is why larboard fell out of use and was replaced with “port”. See this NOAA page which says “Over time, larboard—too easily confused with starboard—was replaced with port.”
It’s surprising both terms lasted as long as they had/have since they didn’t originally refer to left or right anyway. Starboard referred to the side the rudder was on (usually the right to favor right-handed pilots) and larboard (and port for that matter) referred to the side the vessel was docked or loaded on since the rudder would come between the boat and the dock otherwise. If sailors weren’t so damned stubborn, they would have switched to plain old “left” and “right” as soon as rudders started to be centered on the keel.
For some people (about 15%), “left” and “right” are confusing terms, so having terms that relate to a specific part of the boat may be better to use, especially in giving commands that require quick action.
Humans are constantly making decisions about spatial relations; however, some spatial relations, such as left–right, are commonly confused, while other spatial relations, such as up–down, above–below, and front–back, are seldom, if ever, mistaken.
Plus, on a boat, left-right changes with the direction a person is facing. For a person facing the bow, “left” means a different direction than for a person facing the stern.
“Port” and “starboard” are locations on the boat that do not change. As you say, “larboard” and “starboard” refer to the sides of the boat, not to left and right.
A modern example is that when giving directions to a driver of a car with left-right confusion, “driver side” and “passenger side” are better terms to use than “left” and “right”.
My wife is one of those who has trouble. After a number of “Oh I meant the OTHER left” We settled on ring side and not ring side as she wears her wedding ring on her left hand and can look.
I had some trouble with left and right when I was a child, although I no longer do. I can wink my right eye more easily than my left, so if I was confused about left and right I would wink in order to resolve it.
Stranger yet, there are languages without words for left and right. They are basically languages whose speaker are confined to small areas. They may use words for north and south… They may use words for something like “close to river X” and “close to river Y”, where the language is confined to an area between X and Y. Some things to read about this:
And, as you can see, the word for left became taboo in some languages. It then had to be replaced with another term. This is all just another example of how utterly strange some other languages seem if you don’t know them.
Thank you. Always appreciate your linguistic comments.
(I kept seeing the “W” icon popping up at the bottom of the page and then disappearing, and thought, “Why is Wendall taking so long?” Kept hitting “refresh” in anticipation. )
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