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> To distinguish between those and our moon, you can use the proper name 'Moon' (capitalised) or Luna if you are so inclined. No you don't. Not in english at l
by liftbigweights 8y ago
> To distinguish between those and our moon, you can use the proper name 'Moon' (capitalised) or Luna if you are so inclined.
No you don't. Not in english at least. The moon or sun is understood in context and with the article "the". "The moon" and "the sun" without qualifications is understood to mean earth's moon or earth's sun. General references like "a sun" or "a moon" connote non-specific and non-identifying moon or sun. If you want to specifically identify other moons or other suns, you qualify it like - the moons of jupiter or sun of X solar system.
As an example, the recent SpaceX announcement.
"The proposed trip—a trip around the moon for two passengers lasting about a week—is almost the same as a scheme hatched by the tourism company Space Adventures, whose president told Quartz last year it had two clients booked for the mission."
https://qz.com/920993/who-are-the-space-tourists-elon-musk-will-send-around-the-moon/ https://qz.com/920993/who-are-the-space-tourists-elon-musk-w...
- torstenvl 8y agoMakes me wonder if some languages (Spanish, Catalan, Japanese, ...) will adopt a new word for "soil" that isn't synonymous with "earth" once we start farming on other planets. In Romance languages, there is a separate Latin term, closely related to the word "soil," which survives in French and Portuguese. Maybe sol/solo will be borrowed back into the Romance languages where it died out.
- xevb3k 8y agoIn Japanese there’s 地球 which means Earth (this planet), and 土 which means soil. 地 can also mean soil, but it’s a different word from 地球 meaning the planet earth. I don’t think it’s commonly used by itself to mean soil either, but I could be wrong.
- mediumdeviation 8y agoIt means ground, as in the surface on which we live and build things on. 球 means ball or sphere. I wonder if that’s the reason why flat Earthers are rare in China and Japan - the very phrase ‘flat Earth’ is an oxymoron in these languages :)
- xevb3k 8y agoRight, but the word 地球 can only mean the planet Earth, it’s not synonymous with anything else and there’s no room for confusion. Soil, or ground (on any planet) is a different word. There’s not much room for confusion.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- torstenvl 8y agoI was under the impression that 土 could be used for "earth," so I apologize. Thanks for the correction!
- xevb3k 8y agoI’ve not heard it used that way, but I could be wrong. There’s possibly also a historical usage in this sense.
- abrowne 8y agoIn Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, they study areology.