this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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It has its own terms for a very good reason.
It's relative to the boat, so that if you are standing on deck and looking back everyone knows what you mean and not if you are talking about your reative left or the boats.
Port was also initially Larboard, but it turns out when shouting a direction from the other side of a boat, having two similar sounding terms for opposite directions often results in crashing said boat, so it was changed in the mid 1800s.
So you just collectively agree that left is the ships left while you're on the ship.
Problem solved.
The left is always the ship's left, just like the left side of a car is always the left side of a car.
Except we say drivers/passengers side when referring to the side of a car. People dislike port because they can't remember it from lack of use. Insecurities cause this whole discussion.
I don't use it often at all, but when I was 6, I just remembered left/port had 4 letters and haven't forgotten yet. Some day I might, but me forgetting doesn't mean I should ask everyone else to stop using language.
E.g. I have a plethora of grapes. We should stop using the term plethora because they could just say "a lot."
That reminds me of the old joke:
A widow was holding a funeral for her husband, when a man asked if he could say a word. "Of course" said the widow, so he stood up and exclaimed "plethora!". The widow replied "thanks, that means a lot".
Does drivers/passenger side work when you don't know if you are speaking with British or American people?
It could, "the car got t-boned on the drivers side of the vehicle."
You would ask if the driver was alright, passenger side you may state "oh thank goodness (insert significant other name here) wasn't with them.
... better wording recommended, that may sound like you didn't care about the driver
Also if you always say "left and right" instead of "right and left" (which must english speakers probably do) you can remember that port and starboard are the same order.
The way I taught myself to remember is "starboard" has more "R"s in it, so that means "right".
Right
Theaters just call it stage right and stage left
Ok so are we settling on bow left and bow right then?
Yeah, the enemies gate is always down. My body's left is always my body's left. Just like the ships left is always left from the front lol.
Ain't nobody riding around in a intertube ship lol.