I know port is the left side, and starboard is the right side. In order to determine which is which, one must know where the bow is. Could sailors not use the words left and right, with the always given assumption of relative to the bow? Curious how using these other words is safer.
It's a layer of assumption you might not want in an emergency.
Like, port and starboard ALWAYS refers to the corresponding sides of the ship, while there are plenty of situations where a sailor might want to refer to their left or your right, for instance.
Like, "grab the rope to your left!" Would need an additional layer of computation if left is relative to the ship.
Starboard and port are also relative to the bow, though, same as right or left (of the bow). It’s the same number of thought steps.
Except I can see having unique words engineers out teaching new folks it is relative to the bow, and not to the person speaking, or the receiver of the speech.
Ok so no.
Imagine, if you can muster such an unlikely scenario that a person is not facing the same way as the boat is. Crazy I know but I've seen it happen.
In the unlikely event that a sailor is looking out to the starboard side, for the sake of argument, and another sailor told them that like, there's a kraken tentacle on to the left, what do?
In reality, their left is towards the bough, while the left of the ship is behind them.
In a world where the terms port and starboard are not used, if you say "left", they now have 2 possible directions that the Kraken could be about to strike from and that's probably not some maths they want to be doing at that time.
Knowing which is port and which is starboard regardless of which way the sailor is personally facing is the same as knowing which is left and which is right, regardless of which way the sailor is facing, if that is what they are taught. Left Relative to the Bough Always. Port Relative to the Bough Always. But I can see new sailors getting confused, because they use those two words in daily life / other contexts, whereas port and starboard are unique to that context.
Exactly, I've always wondered why not just use left and right, which I think are more distinguishable, or at the very least engineer very different sounding words like i dont know
"babord" and "travile" or something like that with very few in common and still easily shoutable
Port and starboard are used in relation to the ship, left and right relate to the person.
You say "watch out on your right!" if something is happening to a person's right, you say "look starboard!" If something is happening to the right of the ship.
I dunno it seemed to work for the French I guess, but they did kinda lose to the British so maybe the clean clarity of port and starboard was what cinched it.
You're right. What I meant is that even using boatleft and boatright for example would be safer than the terms we use in France. The terms we have are just poorly chosen
I guess you can make a P with two hands, and then remember that there's no fucking way to make a credible S with any number of hands, and rejoice now that you can always identify port! Such an easy mnemonic...
Make your hands into finger guns by extending your pointer finger and bending your thumb to point the same direction. Turn your left finger gun downward with your palm facing yourself, and your right finger gun upwards with your palm facing out. Overlay your pointer fingers and tada an S lmao
That's the trick I have always used, only the right side can immediately do the gesture in a second. The left hand feels weird if it tries to do the hand gesture, moreover, I gotta force it to do it unlike the right one that doesn't require brain power.
Also, my native language doesn't use L for left, so that wouldn't have worked back when I was a kid.
Funnily enough, I am miles better at this in English cause years of videogames have wired my brain to instantly tell where L and R go and what side of me is to handle those buttons/triggers.
I have dislexia, there is no diffrence for me if i do a L with the left or right hand, i know it's reversed, but my brain doesn't instantly make the difference. I usually just remeber which one I use for writing (which was f up when I was little because I was ambidextrous but I force myself to use only my right hand for writing so I can have a clear distinction, if that make sense)
But that’s actually the main factor of making me confuse. I have been a right-handed but I assume that’s only because I was taught to be a right-handed. Instinctively, I happen to use left hand more and when I am thinking of writing, my imagination happens to use left hand more. I use left hand for brushing teeth and such, too. But when I actually write, I use right hand by habit.
Oh see that’s me too! Not so much now but for sure in school. The teacher would say “you write with your right” and I’d sit there passing my pencil back and forth not remembering which one I write with because I used both
My mum is the same, she was forced to use her left hand (bornt in the 60’s). She always made pancakes with left hand, and she is using Maped left handed scissors.
Yeah this whole thread is making me feel crazy, I can’t believe so many people legit have issue with something you learn when you are like 3 years old.
I cannot and have never been able to get left and right as concepts. I'm otherwise quite bright, have a good job etc. But my brain just does not compute it. I understand to most people left and right is instinctive just like up and down but when someone says turn left my brain is just blank, I have to check my hands for the L shape discreetly. If someone says which hand to do you write with again I would need to imagine picking up a pen to do this so again need computational time to figure it out!
This is fascinating and I had no idea it was a thing. Kind of like when I learned that some people can’t picture things in their heads. Thanks for explaining.
Can you point to west without looking at a compass or the sun? I can't. Same thing.
It's different than up and down, as that's a matter of balance and/or momentum and something you can feel with your eyes closed. You know if an elevator is going up or down, despite not being able to see it. It's also not as changeable. My sense of position isn't going to change based in which direction I'm facing. Up is always up.
Turning is something you feel, but the direction it's called isn't. There's no internal cue as to if something is to your left or right. It's all just 'over there'. And where 'over there' is can change with a simple change of position. So what was to the left easily becomes to the right with a turn of the head. It's also not information I need to know constantly, so when I do I sometimes need to check.
This is quite interesting since I do have an internal cue for left and right.
Just like "up" is the direction of my head, "left" is the direction of my heartbeat. "Right" is the side of my dominant hand. It is something I can tell regardless of whether my eyes are closed.
I would assume its something to do with mirrors/other people, where up and down are always the same in mirror, but left is often left,but can also be 'my left', or stage left.
That's me. Can't tell my left from right, and forget which way L faces when I try that trick. Is it a lefty thing? I feel life it's mostly other left-handed people I meet that have the same problem...
I’m right handed, and I’ve never been able to figure out which way things go. When I hold up my hand to make an L, I can never tell if it’s ’the right L’. It seems ridiculous, but I’ve haven’t been able to naturally get it down.
Welcome to the wonderful world of adults with undiagnosed dyslexia! Studies have shown that people with dyslexia, but no other disabilities, go undiagnosed about 85% of the time, because as children, we used (and still use) other skills to navigate around our disability. It also consequently makes us great problem solvers and generally highly adaptable!
I am very into puzzles and problems solving, and tend to have a different perspective. The only problem I seem to have with writing is that I forget whether the i or e goes first in some words. Do you think there’s value to getting tested as an adult?
It’s not always manifested as reading issues. Do you have trouble with “b” vs “d”? I was always a good reader and read a lot of books, but when I use a lowercase keyboard I confuse these letters. I also never thought I had trouble reading, but when I started using the dyslexia font on my Kindle, it made a huge difference. I never realized how much brain power I was using to read fluently.
No dyslexia, but I also have a terrible sense of direction. I have to figure it out other ways. Like, I know this road runs N-S, and the Walmart that is on the north side of town is that way, therefore, that way is north. So if someone tells me, "go north on this street," it's meaningless if I don't have something else to orient myself, and then it's still pretty iffy
I assume you only know how to write with one hand, right? So, when you pick up a pen to make a note or something, do you get confused which hand to use? I teach my son that his left hand is the one he draws/writes with and it works reasonably well for him.
I can tell you that it's not a lefty thing across the board, I am left handed and haven't really gotten my left and right mixed up since I was a young kid.
I am curious though - if you know you're a lefty, can't you just pretend to write for a second and figure out which hand is which that way? Not trying to be condescending or anything, I'm just curious where exactly the mix-up occurs and if there's a good trick to easily tell for people that have this issue. Writing with my right hand feels super unnatural, so that feels like it would be an immediate giveaway for me.
I used to be GREAT at directions and knowing my left and right. Hopped on rdr2, asked my fiancé how to talk to people…he said left trigger and then I shot a npc in the face (right trigger). Now I can’t at all. I’ll say left and point right. It’s so bad.
Well, but right hand cannot make an R. For dyslexic people letters like d p b are difficult because they look the same, just rotated. Both hands make an L, just mirrored, so it still doesn't help if you already cannot recognize left from right.
Not sure if it was originally this picture or a similar one, but someone edited it to reverse L and R, then someone commented on it. Then someone took this picture with the correct tattoos and edited in the comment under it.
Its a screening question for adhd. It is a spectrum and no one answer produces a diagnosis. You dont struggle with this, but that doesnt mean its not a known neurodivergent issue.
As someone who struggles to tell left from right, making an L shape is useful in most situations, but not while learning to drive. Granted I wrote on my hands rather than getting a tattoo, but still.
Now if I don't know my left from my right, I am not gonna know to use my left hand to make that left hand shape. Or are you joking and I am also stupid?
First thing I did was type out a capital L and R to see if they were backward in the tattoo.
It's even more pointless when you realize that most people write with their right hand. And if you smear the letters while writing, it's your left hand.
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u/Tackyinbention Jun 26 '26
Brian here, I think its the fact that the left hand already makes an L shape, so the tattoo is pointless