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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…
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In french theatre has specific words for left and right. Côté cour et Côté jardin. Courtside and garden side. In geography left and right banks of a river are always in the direction of the flow
> 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.
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).
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…
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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.
To rig something up, to go overboard, to leave something in your wake.
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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).
> 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.
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.
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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.
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.
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> 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.
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…
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.
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.