This thread seems to have mutated into a discussion of the difficulty some people have with the idea of “left” and “right,” and direction, relative or absolute, in general.
Of course, some mutations are beneficial. It’s been an interesting discussion.
I myself have no difficulty with left and right, or east, west, north and south, or port and starboard, or any other descriptors of direction.
I’m aware that some adults do. I know, of course, that children take a while to figure it out. My seven-year-old completely gets it. My four-year-old seems to be grasping the concept. My eighteen-month-old has no idea, but then we haven’t tried to teach him yet.
My wife, on the other hand, cannot tell right from left. At least not quickly. We’ve developed a system in which, when I have to communicate leftness or rightness to her, I say “driver’s side” or “passenger side” (any time I have to communicate left or right, not just when we’re in the car).
IMO both of the above are at least partly incorrect nonsense. “Port” and “Starboard” and “Left” and “Right” are both designators for relative, not absolute directions. Port and starboard are normally applied relative to a watercraft. Not any other sort of moving vehicle or fixed structure. The terms could be applied relative to something else, but that’s not the way they’re commonly used.
Exactly like “port” and “starboard”, “left” and “right” are always relative to something. Sometimes that’s your body. But not always. IMO @Doreen’s mistake is saying left and right are always body-relative. Not so.
Sometimes left and right are relative to your car, your airplane, your bicycle, or your horse. Or relative to somebody else’s body that may well be facing a different direction than you are. Absent any further qualification you might reasonably guess somebody saying “left” or “right” are using the terms relative to their body, but that’s a possibly-incorrect assumption, not an incontrovertible fact. Whenever two people are discussing left and right, somebody needs to be explicit about whose body these directions are defined relative to. As @Doreen correctly explains in part of what she said, that issue doesn’t arise with absolute coordinate systems like North, East, South, and West*.
As to @BigT …
IMO the folks who subscribe to your POV are some of the ones who get it exactly backwards. You absolutely could label your hands port & starboard. And wander around town giving directions that make you sound like a yachting nerd.
But if you did that, then when facing aft on a boat, the port side of your body would be facing the starboard side of the boat. And vice versa. As with @Doreen above, you’d need to be careful in speaking to other sailors to specify which P&S coordinate system you’re using. Because they would assume P&S were boat-relative and that you’d use L&R if speaking of body-relative. But those would be assumptions, not incontrovertible facts.
For whatever reasons, aviation did not adopt port and starboard. We stuck with left and right for the aircraft-relative coordinates. So the issue of aircraft-relative left versus person-relative left comes up regularly. Given that many FA’s seats and viewpoints while doing their jobs are aft-facing, this can lead to confusion unless everyone is careful to be explicit enough to dispel the ambiguity.
* At least while we're just on a restricted part of the Earth's surface. As soon as we are talking a material section of the sphere we're on, or are talking about interplanetary things, the supposedly fixed and stable NESW coordinate system suddenly becomes merely relative to your local area and transforms are needed when talking about anyone else's North or East.
There may be some confusion here because “left/port” and “right/starboard” are sometimes relative directions and sometimes labels. You can paint an L on one hand and a P on one side of a boat. Those are labels. Properly applied the L goes on your left hand and the P goes on the port side of the boat.
I can take my left hand and move it to the right side of my body. It is still my left hand because that is a label. I can cut off my left hand and put it anywhere and it is still my left hand. It’s the same with port. You cut out the properly labeled port side of a boat and attach it to the other side and it doesn’t change that side of the boat to the port side.
‘Left’ is only a direction when it is considered relative to the front to back orientation of your body. And in baseball and golf ‘pull’ and ‘hook’ mean left relative to the handedness of a swing.
I think the confusion is the comparison between left/right and port/starboard
The port side of the boat is identified by people as left when facing the front of the boat. But that’s just to make it easy to remember. It is always the port side you could paint port on the gunwale and it will never change. Port and starboard are used so that people DON’T confuse left and right ‘side’ of the boat no matter what your orientation is on the boat.
If a crew is asked to the left, while facing the rear of the boat, he would look to HIS left. If he is asked to look to port he will look to HIS right. This is designed IMHO to keep things like that from being confused.
When two boats interact; say that I’m overtaking a slower boat , ideally I pass on his starboard side (my port to his starboard). Two boats meeting on a head-on collision course need to pass port-to-port.
Sometimes these interactions arise suddenly and everyone needs to be on the same page. It is amazing how many close calls I’ve seen on the water. Boaters should have to pass a test like you do with a car.
Left doesn’t suddenly become right when you are facing the back of the boat. Nor does starboard become port when you are facing the back of the boat. But when you are facing the back of the boat, the port side of the boat is on the right side of your body. If “port” meant “left” , that wouldn’t happen - and there would be no need to use “port” and “starboard” rather than “right” and “left”. I mean, sure instead of “port” we could say “the left side of the boat when you are facing forward” but that’s a lot more words.
Did you see my post about ‘left/right’ and ‘port/starboard’ being both labels and directions? The labels never change, the directions are always relative.
Both you & Dung_Beetle have convinced me: if someone asks what I do, I’m going to tell them I’m a farmer. I work in regulated health markets and, whether it’s me explaining poorly or my job just being all over the place, it’s impossible to tell people who I do succinctly.
No matter how many times people in this thread claim it, I cannot understand what is so complicated about “left” and “right.” It’s like saying it is so confusing to add 1+1.
No. Back in the old days, boats were steered by having a long oar stuck over the back of the boat. Because most people are right handed, these oars were generally put over the right side of the boat which gave right-handers better leverage. This led to the right side of the boat being called the steering side, which in Old English was steor bord. This evolved to starboard.
Boats were tied to the dock and loaded on the side of the boat that didn’t have the steering oar on it. This led to the left side of the boat being called the larboard from the Old English ladde-bord, which meant loading side.
Larboard and starboard sounded too much alike and caused confusion. So larboard was changed to port because the people that worked on the docks were called porters (from the Latin word portus, which means harbor) and that was the side of the boat they worked on.
eta: The word porter might also derive from the Latin word port, which means carrying something. Porters were the people who carried thing on and off the boat.
I am a farmer; and it’s impossible to tell people what I do succinctly. At least, unless they already know something about the subject.
I’m not at all sure this issue is a matter of the brain working “correctly” or “incorrectly”. There are entire societies that orient by east/west/etcetera and don’t use left and right.
It’s true that there are societies that don’t have an ingrained concept of left and right, but in this thread - where we’re discussing things we’ve been surprised we had to explain - we’re talking about individuals who grew up in a society where left/right are important concepts, and so some of us find it baffling that any such person, having reached adulthood, would not have a clear conception of left/right.
I suppose maybe the same way people who can spell perfectly have trouble understanding how people with dyslexia cannot. It seems possibly related to the curse of knowledge.
Some of them think it means that I must have livestock. Some of them think I stick all the seed in the ground first thing in the spring and don’t have to do anything else until harvest time.
And, although I don’t have livestock, I’m still befuddled over one particular thing I once had to explain: partly befuddled because this was to another attendee at a farm conference; a set of workshops about growing crops then unusual in the area. I’d gone with a neighbor who did have livestock, and was sitting with her; in casual conversation with another person, my neighbor mentioned that it was her daughter hadn’t been able to come to the conference because it was lambing season. The third person asked what lambing season was. My neighbor explained that’s the time of year when sheep are having their lambs. The person then said yes, but why does that mean she has to stay home?
Only time in my life I’ve ever seen that neighbor speechless. I had to step in and explain that sometimes mammals giving birth need assistance, occasionally emergency assistance.
True. But it’s still a matter more of their brains working differently than of their brains working incorrectly. Their brains may be working just fine for an east/west society; while the brains of some of those who have no problem with left and right would give them severe problems if they lived in such a group. (Others, I expect, can learn both versions.)
The dyslexia problem is actually a pretty good example – it’s only a problem for literate societes; which means that, for most of the existence of humans, it was a problem either for nobody or for almost nobody. And I’ve seen some reference to dyslexics possibly being better at other types of pattern recognition.
, ideally I pass on his starboard side (my port to his starboard). Two boats meeting on a head-on collision course need to pass port-to-port.