People often confuse the directions “left” and “right.”
Additionally, “right” can additionally mean “correct,” which leads to the exchange:
- “Should I turn left here?”
Instead of using random words like “left” or “right,” let’s use some words that inherently have left-right properties to them.
In English, the alphabet always comes in this order
- A B C D … W X Y Z
The leftmost letter (or a similar word) can be the new word for “left,” and likewise with the rightmost letter.
So “left” becomes can become “Aa,” which is actually already a Scrabble word (among other options, this one: Aa). It could be pronounced either with the a in “bat” (aa-aa) or the a in “law” (ah-ah). Or a combination, like “aa-ah.”
“Right” will then become “Zz,” which is, obviously, pronounced “zi-zuh,” as if you extended the end of the word “pizza.”
An alternative option would be to pick a multi-syllabic word that everyone knows, and use the left part of that word as “left” and the right part of that word as “right.”
Plenty of words would be suitable, but here are two proposals (Figures 4 and 5):
See how difficult this ORIGINAL English exchange is:
- DRIVER: “Should I turn left at the next intersection?”
- PASSENGER: “Right. Then once there’s no road left, right.”
Q: Which way should the car go? But see how much clearer it becomes with our new and improved words:
- DRIVER: “Should I turn aard at the next intersection?”
- PASSENGER: “Right. Then once there’s no road left, vark.”
PROS: Totally unambiguous directions will now be possible, saving millions of car crashes and disasters every day.
CONS: Some old-fashioned users of “left” and “right” would need to be mercilessly ridiculed until they adopted this new system.