The same language with different words / those shirts / euthanasia

Carol justcarol67 at yahoo.com
Mon May 5 14:55:40 UTC 2008


> Carol:
> > In any case, I've always felt sure that young drivers would find
it less confusing for the right (right-hand) side to be the right
(correct) side and the left side to be wrong than for left to be right
and right to be wrong. Right?
> 
> Geoff:
> You need to mirror inage that for the UK . We are taught that the
left hand side (nearer the  pavement if there is one or the hard
shoulder on a motorway) is the one to stay in unless you are overtaking.

Carol responds:
Oh, dear. I seem to have been completely misunderstood in my recent
playful posts.

I was punning. The right side is the *right* (correct) side. Get it?
So if a young driver is told to drive on the right side of the road,
he's simultaneously being told to stay on the right-hand side and the
correct side. And that actually does seem more logical to me than "the
left side is the right side to drive on." (The right side, is, in
fact, etymologically associated with correctness and moral rectitude,
whereas "left" derives from a word meaning "weak"--the left hand is
the wrong hand for most people, no offense to lefties intended.) 

Carol, imagining a "who's on first" style conversation beginning, "I
turn left, right?"





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