Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or simply StaRRRboard is right
PoRRRt!
Never heart an ORRR from a pirate.
Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
431–440 of 636 posts
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Mexican spanish should not be the reference for what is said in spanish
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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
...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
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
This tracks, actually - Spain (or Spanish monarchs) ruled the Netherlands for over 170 years.
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.
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#435It'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 s…
> 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.
Your left hand doesn't turn into your right hand if you lie on the bed different way
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#436Does 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.
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
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 ho…
> 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.)
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#438There'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…
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 th…
That claim needs to be substantiated.
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
That is pretty cool!
Swedish (also picking a lot from German, of course) has the same word ("lä", and no I'm not going to try to describe the pronunciation) but our usage is wider in scope. In Swedish lä is simply "out of the wind", and not restricted to use onboard a vessel. Cool, didn't know that about English.
Re: Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”
#440Does 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.
Yeah, it's not really an explanation.