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It'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, wher
by antognini 4y ago
It'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 school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. You could imagine that the maritime world could have gone with a similar convention. But the downside is that on very rare occasions someone along the way gets confused and the doctor operates on the wrong side of the body.
The theatrical world takes an intermediate approach, where they use the terms "stage left / stage right", which always refer to the perspective of an actor onstage facing the audience. Then the word "stage" tells you the perspective, but you still keep the words left/right so you don't have to memorize two completely separate words.
- interroboink 4y agoYour medical comment reminded me of the fascinating constellation of terminology used to identify locations and orientations in anatomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location Some of the terms: dorsal/ventral, proximal/distal, anterior/posterior, superior/inferior, oral/aboral, basal/apical When you're describing something like a microbe, the terms get fairly arbitrary; which is the "head" end of some little blobby thing?
- dogmatism 4y agothe thing that's tricky is basal/apical can be different directions: i.e. the base of the lung is at the bottom, the base of the left ventricle (in the heart) at the top. You have to know the shape of the organ to know. There's also cranial/caudal, axial/coronal/sagittal just off the top of my head
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoThat's some good punning!
- bewaretheirs 4y agoAnd dentists talking about tooth faces have buccal (cheek-side), lingual (tongue side), occlusal (chewing surface), mesial (side closest to center), and distal (the other side from mesial).
- abhibeckert 4y ago> At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective In (musical) theatre we do it the other way around. The we call it "stage left" and "stage right" or "SL and SR" since we use abbreviations everywhere in our notes. It's always from the "stage manager's perspective" which is traditionally (but not always) facing the audience. If the stage manager is facing a different way that doesn't affect the meaning of left/right. It's from their perspective because they are basically the only person who isn't running around like a chook with their head cut off (because their eyes are glued to the script and video screens - https://youtu.be/DP2QOmN57iU?t=82 https://youtu.be/DP2QOmN57iU?t=82).
- danielvf 4y agoFor stage directions there's also "House Left" and "House Right", which are from the perspective of the audience.
- blahlabs 4y agoAnd in broadcast it can be referred to as 'Camera Left' and 'Camera Right', which is also from the audience perspective.
- HelloNurse 4y agoThe camera's perspective. Audience perspective could be mediated by coarse special effects such as reflecting or turning the image.
- dotancohen 4y agoI've heard it referred to as "Audience Left" and "Audience Right", though I'm not in the industry.
- jdietrich 4y agoIn the automotive trade, a vehicle has a "driver's side" and "passenger side". This only partly solves the ambiguity, because of course some countries drive on the left.
- hanoz 4y ago> At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. Didn't know that! So how pervasive is this principal? Would it apply to a descriptive reference to a diagram in a book for example?
- antognini 4y agoYes. As a random example, you'll see that although the lungs are seen from the perspective of a doctor facing a patient, they are labelled left/right from the patient's perspective: https://www.therespiratorysystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Lungs.jpg https://www.therespiratorysystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2017...
- zarzavat 4y agoThe reason is that when a patient comes to a doctor they will say they have a pain in their left side, without further qualification. So it makes sense to center the entire terminology around that situation. Otherwise doctors would constantly be having to do error-prone conversions.
- beefield 4y agoI think the principle is pretty pervasive also outside medicals. I do not recall anyone ever refer to my left hand as right hand (other than maybe by mistake), regardless how they are oriented around me.
- tzs 4y agoThere's also the approach taken in some Australian native languages, e.g. [1], where they use absolute directions instead of relative directions, so they would call what we call the port side of a boat the north side if the boat was heading east, and call it the west side if the boat was heading north. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuuk_Thaayorre_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuuk_Thaayorre_language
- bryanlarsen 4y agoAsk a farmer for directions. In my experience it's more likely they will tell you to turn north/south/east/west than left or right.
- yafbum 4y agoMaybe in the US and other places that have a grid system as their main road planning principle and route naming principle? In Europe, where roads tend to follow the terrain more, I've not really heard this.
- HideousKojima 4y agoThe US doesn't really have a (consistent) grid system outside of cities, with the notable exception of Utah (due to planning efforts by the Mormon pioneers). And even in cities it can be a mess. For example Seattle grew from three different smaller areas that all planned their roads to be parallel to the coast. The problem is the coast isn't in a straight line so as they grew and combined into a single city it created a lot of awkward intersections where the roads meet.
- yafbum 4y ago? I'm not talking about the suburbs of Seattle, check out maps of rural areas of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, Nebraska, or even the plains in the east of Washington state, most of the rural roads are running primarily North/South or East/West. Not that it's a grid system as in Manhattan, but it is following a grid pattern, and the names of the routes on signs and in spoken language are like "380 West" "215 North", etc. In the interstate system and many state road systems, this is reinforced by numbering convention that East/West roads are numbered even, while North/South roads are numbered odd. None of that exists in Europe.
- bckygldstn 4y ago> stage left / stage right Outdoor recreation often uses climbers left/right and skiers left/right (even when there's no rock or snow) to orient direction relative to slope, which is similarly descriptive and clear to those who haven't heard the terms before. Except for rivers, where True Left and True Right are commonly used in New Zealand for hiking and kayaking, and I can never remember which way round they go!
- wldcordeiro 4y agoI hear skiers left/right or looker's left/right often. Usually looker's is said while on the lift or the base of the mountain.
- themeiguoren 4y agoClimber’s right doesn’t make sense to me as distinguished from looker’s right, since both perform the named activity facing the slope.
- yowzadave 4y agoInterestingly, on tennis courts you have the “deuce” side, which is to the right of the player, and the “ad” side, which is to the left of the player. Because you have two players facing each other, the deuce sides for each player are diagonally opposite from a neutral observer’s perspective.
- matt-attack 4y agoInteresting. I always assumed “stage left” meant from the perspective of looking at the stage.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> theatrical world takes an intermediate approach, where they use the terms "stage left / stage right” Same for skiers’ left and right.
- azepoi 4y agoIn 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
- batiudrami 4y agoRail uses “up” and “down main” where up is in the direction of the port or main terminus.
- iggldiggl 4y agoIn Germany it's just direction "a" (kilometrage increasing) and direction "b" (kilometrage decreasing), though I think that usage isn't quite as prominent as Up/Down is in the UK and UK-influenced countries. In Romania AFAIK they're calling them direction "X" and direction "Y" instead.
- compiler-guy 4y agoWhich makes for some very confusing situations when the river is twisty. There are different places in New Orleans where the West Bank is south of you, west of you, and east of you.
- public_defender 4y agoIronically that city's four cardinal directions of "Uptown," "Downtown," "Lakeside," and "Riverside" are completely unambiguous.
- dmurray 4y agoThat's exactly because they didn't follow the convention. If they called it the Right Bank, it would always be clear which side that was if you could identify the flow of the river.
- dotancohen 4y ago> 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.
- rcthompson 4y agoThe advantage of using separate words for the frame of reference of the boat is that you can still use left and right with their normal meanings as well.
- InCityDreams 4y ago"It'll be starboard side, hung up on the left."
- usrbinbash 4y agoBut I can also say: "I'm on the left side of the boat, and hold an apple in my left hand." The boat has a clearly distinguishable bow and stern, so it provides a frame of reference.
- rcthompson 4y ago"Left side of the boat" is a lot more syllables than "port". And using different words makes it less likely that the listener will be confused by multiple uses of the same word to mean different things.
- yafbum 4y agoIn 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).
- mhandley 4y ago>like "the preferred channel is to the left of the buoy" While this is true, we (at least in England) would normally say "leave the buoy to starboard" (though when racing we'd call it a 'mark' rather than a buoy). Perhaps it's habit, I'm not sure, but it's generally unambiguous.
- yafbum 4y agoSame in the US. But only if you were actually going there, not if you're just describing what's around you!
- manarth 4y ago> 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.
- niccl 4y agoAnd sometimes you get Prompt Side and Opposite Prompt, which are _usually_ stage left and stage right respectively, but it depends on the theatre, with some having the prompt on the stage right.
- jjav 4y ago> 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.
- BigCryo 4y ago*Cough cough* rum, sodomy, and the lash *cough cough*
- petersellers 4y agoIt'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.
- walthamstow 4y agoWhat 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.
- swiftcoder 4y agohttps://www.boatsafe.com/easy-guide-talking-salty/ https://www.boatsafe.com/easy-guide-talking-salty/
- Dobbs 4y agoLeeway is another common one.
- tudorw 4y agobow, boom, tack, hitch, tiller, helm, etc :)
- 4y ago
- kaapipo 4y agoIn theatrical context, they also use "house left" and "house right" for similar effect but with a different perspective
- swader999 4y agoAt a ski hill, it's skiers left/right so you know it's from the reference of someone going down the hill. Drivers side, passenger side...
- ioseph 4y agoSome medical terms become hugely helpful when receiving a massage: "more medial, more lateral"
- HPsquared 4y agoIf you're inside a ship, it's often hard to say what way around you are: "left" and "right" have utility for the perspective of a person onboard. Port and starboard are the onboard equivalent of North/South/East/West when walking on land, especially if you're inside a building with no windows for external reference. This is unlike for a doctor, where it's obvious which side is which: you can see the patient.
- lostlogin 4y ago> This is unlike for a doctor, where it's obvious which side is which: you can see the patient. This isn’t always true and it’s not always obvious. For example with imaging - axial slices of the patient through symmetrical structures. The brain, lower abdo, a single leg or arm etc, etc. There are conventions in image display for a reason - it is not obvious. For axial slices, as an observer, you are positioned as though at the foot of the patient’s bed. Your right is the patients left.
- eloisant 4y agoI 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.
- ChrisRR 4y agoAssumptions like this is how errors are made. Don't make assumptions, codify it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rprospero 4y agoYou'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 https://scratch.rprosperoglobal.duckdns.org/lungs.png
- lostlogin 4y ago> At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. I was recently involved in a case where a patient decided that their left should be called the right side during a phone consultation as that would help their doctor. Good times.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoIs this the story of how someone ended up with one less appendix than they should have?
- jdmichal 4y agoPeople only have one appendix to start with. Did you mean appendage?
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoNo, that's what I meant, but said in a facetious way. If someone is complaining about lower right abdominal pain that could be the appendix, when lower left would not be.
- atoav 4y agoAs a camera operator or director I always tended to use "your left/right", "my left/right" or "camera left/right". The first two made their way into my everyday speak as well.
- dsego 4y agoAfaik, this is not the case in all other languages to have specific nautical terms for sides. I asked a sailor friend for the terminology in our language and it's just left side and right side/flank, seems pretty self explanatory, by convention you are orienting forwards. Like any profession though, having specific terminology helps distinguish from the outside group and maintain impression of expertise.
- denton-scratch 4y ago> seems pretty self explanatory On a big ship, like an aircraft carrier or cruiser, you can qite easily lose track of which direction is the prow (front). Many carrier crew rarely go up on deck. And if the ship happens to be sailing astern, left and right become ambiguous.
- dsego 4y ago> you can qite easily lose track of which direction is the prow If you don't where the prow is, how do you know where starboard is? I guess if the sailing direction is backwards, it might be confusing if you say "to your left", but if you say "left side", it should still be clear I think, maybe not.
- jodrellblank 4y agoThen you have cars, where left/right would make perfect sense in all cars from the driver’s perspective but instead people use “nearside” and “offside” which are relative to the kerb while driving[1]. That means it’s relative to which side of the road the country drives on so if you drive a right-hand-drive UK car into mainland Europe, do nearside and offside swap on that car and you need to buy differently named replacement parts? Always annoying that it could be clearer and more stable and shorter to use the driver’s perspective with “Driver left/right” to be specific and then would be the same sides on all cars moving or parked in any orientation in all countries. [1] not valid if you turn around and park backwards!
- closewith 4y agoThere's also the convention of inside and outside lanes on multilane roads. In each the UK, Ireland, and the United States, the inside lane is the leftmost lane. However, due to driving on the opposite sides of the road, this means that while the inside lane in the US is closest to the central median, in the UK & Ireland, the inside lane is closet to the curb. Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/inside-lane https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/inside-l...
- saiya-jin 4y agoFrench (maybe its in english too actually, natives could comment) say rive gauche and rive droit for which bank of the river or lake we talk about. Always taken from perspective of river flowing downhill. Makes sense, just takes some time getting used to when coming from language which doesnt obsess about it that much
- q1w2 4y agoThis is true in english also. The right/left bank of a river is always from the perspective of the water flowing/facing downstream.
- jimmySixDOF 4y agoI remember some time ago Cisco Nexus equipment that had different catalog definitions in the NX series (2000/5000/7000/9000) of the Air Intake definitions of where the "Front" was in a Front to Back fan setup. You literally had to order skus with conflicting descriptions if you wanted a consistent system.
- wrigby 4y agoI also really like the theatrical world’s convention of “upstage” (further from the audience) and “downstage” (closer to the audience) - disambiguating the front and back of a stage.
- scoopr 4y agoHow about always using world relative words? https://www.naturalnavigator.com/news/2010/09/guugu-yimithirr/ https://www.naturalnavigator.com/news/2010/09/guugu-yimithir...
- qwertox 4y ago> 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.
- bearmode 4y agoThe patient's left and patient's right are always going to be the same, regardless of which way the patient is facing. It'll change it from the doctor's perspective, but that's irrelevant since you're only looking at it from the patient's.
- adql 4y agoYour left hand doesn't turn into your right hand if you lie on the bed different way
- qwertox 4y agoI am aware of this. But oftentimes patients are completely covered by a green blanked with the exception of a small space of skin. I just thought that this could cause some confusion.
- wazoox 4y agoIn French, starboard and port are "tribord" (same etymology as "starboard", through Dutch) and "bâbord" ("back (of the oarman) board"). On stage, they are "côté cour" and "côté jardin" because the "Comédie-Française" theatre during the 1770 was in the Tuileries palace, and the stage was oriented with the Louvre courtyard on its right, and the Tuileries garden on its left.
- wellanyway 4y ago> because the "Comédie-Française" theatre during the 1770 was in the Tuileries palace, and the stage was oriented with the Louvre courtyard on its right, and the Tuileries garden on its left That is the most french explanation possible.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoIn English, there's an archaic "larboard" meaning "port side". My understanding is that this word was intentionally banished due to confusion originating from the sound being so similar to "starboard".
- red-iron-pine 4y agoMakes good sense. Imagine trying to scream that to someone at night in a storm after you've both had a ration of rum. Probably a non-trivial number of people were hurt or killed because of that linguistic similarity; we see the same with air traffic control and pilots using ambiguous language.
- tropicaljacket 4y agothis is mentioned in the linked article
- lynguist 4y agoIn German it’s Steuerbord (meaning the same as starboard) and Backbord (compare Middle Low German ba(c)kbōrt and Dutch bakboort; oldest mention of this form is from old English: bæcbord!) The word ‘back’ in German meaning ‘back’ in English doesn’t even exist. Only in this one loanword from Low German. Only today I looked up this word, I never knew or understood that Backbord is literally backboard.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoI suppose it has to do with how many frames of reference you're juggling in a task/profession. With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame. Then there's space, where it gets even more fun, as the relevant frames - the ship, the orbit (or the "centre of gravity" of everything pulling on you) - are completely independent. That is, your orientation doesn't matter for the travel direction. Now, not only "right" and "left" are ambiguous - but also "up", "down", "forward" and "backward". When in orbit, you have "prograde" and "retrograde" to refer to the velocity vector's direction and its opposite; if we dub that "forward" and "backward", then "radial" and "antiradial" are "down" and "up" (i.e. towards / away from the center of orbited body), and then "normal", "antinormal" for "left" and "right", which you can get from the cross product of "forward" and "up".
- ethbr0 4y ago> With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame. There's windward (towards/upwind) and leeward (away/downwind). Are there left and right too? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windward_and_leeward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windward_and_leeward
- BenFrantzDale 4y agoWindward and upwind are different in my book: windward is anything to the side of the boat opposite the main boom, whereas upwind is you draw a line perpendicular to the wind direction and anything toward the wind from that line is upwind. You could have a mark downwind of you on the windward side if you overshot the last tack before a mark.
- closewith 4y agoThere's port/starboard tack, where the wind is coming from the port/starboard side of the vessel. It can be confusing because, for example, if a boat on a port tack tacks to port, the result is a starboard tack (once the bow crosses the direction from which the wind is blowing).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tareqak 4y agoWould using the phrases “patient-left” and “patient-right” improve outcomes in the case of operating on the wrong side of the body?
- blantonl 4y agoSome other persepctives: "Skier's left/right" for snow skiing. Ambiguity arises when looking uphill or downhill. When riding on a float in Mardi Gras in New Orleans. You might be on the "driver's side" or "passenger's side". You could also be on the neutral ground side (left) or the other side. Or the rider could be on the "lake side" (left) or the river side (right). Parades run South to North and the Mississippi River would be on the rider's right and Lake Pontchartrain on the left. Aviation uses a clock face (traffic is at your 2'oclock, northbound) to reference traffic at the pilot's right / front.
- q1w2 4y agoAnother is the right/left bank of a river always refers to the perspective of the water flowing/facing downstream.
- xpe 4y ago> "Skier's left/right" for snow skiing. Ambiguity arises when looking uphill or downhill. But what about “snowboarder’s left”… sounds a lot like “starboard’s left” at which everybody on the fake ski slope on the cruise ship gets incredibly confused? We have to drive out all ambiguity here, or people are doing to die.
- Ichthypresbyter 4y agoSnowboarder's left is either up or down the slope depending on the snowboarder...
- kuon 4y agoIn french, on stage, it's "cour" (stage left) and "jardin" (stage right), meanings yard and garden.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoAt the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. In an effort to avoid ambiguity, I always talk to my doctor in terms of "driver's side" and "passenger side" - thus adopting the maritime approach, but in more common terms.
- gorbypark 4y agoIn the skiing and mountaineering world we use climbers (sometimes “lookers”) right/left or skiers right/left to differentiate when facing uphill or downhill. I find having both is helpful instead of just having a single standardized one. For example, if you are standing and looking at a mountain, it’s easier to say “just to the climbers left of that peak” because it’s on the left from your perspective, likewise when descending it best to say “stay to the skiers left of the rock”. There’s also lots of times it’s good to mix and match, like if you are looking at and discussing a mountain from afar and planning on skiing down it later, you might keep the conversation from a skiers perspective.
- tuatoru 4y agoAnd in general hiking, referring to streams and rivers one may follow or cross, there are the "true left" and "true right" banks of the stream. Meaning, left or right looking the way the water is flowing: downstream.
- illegalsmile 4y agoWe always say "river left" or "river right" but same same.
- altec3 4y agoYep, these are the terms I've always used when whitewater rafting.
- pklausler 4y ago"East bank" and "west bank" are also used for the sides of a watercourse that flows generally north/south, even for bits of it that are flowing east/west or have curved around to flow south/north. Which is why West St. Paul (Minnesota) is directly south of St. Paul proper -- it's on the "west bank" of the Mississippi, while St. Paul is on the "east bank". (Same story, mutadis mutandis, for "north bank" and "south bank" of generally east/west-flowing rivers.)
- xnx 4y agoHow much has the ambiguity between right (direction) and right (correct) cost the world?
- mudita 4y agoThe German theatre world developed the opposite convention, “Bühne links” (literally "stage left”) means left from the perspective of the audience. I don’t know so much about the theatre world, I’m a professional dancer, but at least the dance scene is increasingly international, switching fluently between English or German depending on the people present; some people learned the English/international convention, some - especially older - directors know mainly the German convention, some people are not aware that there are different conventions in English and German and the result is complete chaos.
- mwsfc 4y agoI would venture a guess the logic in some of these cases has a healthy does of practical wisdom baked in. On sailing vessels they are/were? chaotic, violent, noisy, and the crew perhaps wasn't the most experienced/educated(?) so keeping things simple with fixed names was perhaps the optimal safety solution in that environment. In the medical profession it's about the Hippocratic Oath (I am not a doctor), an operating room is more controlled, and everyone (is usually) well trained, so maybe in that environment it makes more sense to make a rule that the perspective should always be the patients? Thinking out loud here more than anything...
- simonh 4y agoLeft and Right didn't have their modern meaning back then. In Old English riht meant straight, as in direct or not bent. It later assumed the meaning of correct as in right and wrong. Lyft meant weak. Their reference to handedness seems to have been incidental. It seems odd to us to talk about the 'straight' and 'weak' hand, but to them it made sense, but maybe not to talk about the 'straight' or 'weak' sides of a boat. The concept of left and right hands was not very commonly used historically. It wasn't important to most people. During the English Civil War many recruits didn't know which hand or foot was left or right. During marching training instructors used to stick some hay in one boot and straw in the other for each recruit and call out "Hay, Straw, Hay, Straw".
- orthecreedence 4y agoAs I was reading your comment I was thinking "huh, that's interesting." But then I remembered: surfers use left/right as well, for instance if a wave breaks right or left. They use the perspective of being in the ocean and looking back at the shore, as opposed to the shore looking out to the ocean. I remember asking that very question when I first started.
- butterknife 4y agoWe also use "house left/house right" to describe the audience perspective.
- wlonkly 4y ago> The theatrical world takes an intermediate approach, where they use the terms "stage left / stage right", The opposite of that, rarely used but still out there, is house left/house right.