Regarding Do other languages call Earth “Earth”?,
I have 2 issues with that reply.
For one thing the stated French translation is quite wrong.
For the other thing, perhaps the original question was not about a litteral translation per say.
So in French, the Earth is “la Terre”. That “mondiale” means “worldwide” -close but no candy.
It may be interesting to note that, in French, that same word designates dirt, the ground, earth or the Earth. Meaning is conveyed with more words, just like in English one draws a picture showing a boat, which draws some many feet, about to pass a bridge that draws for all this to happen.
Crossing into a new language, one cannot escape to notice that “givens” are differents, concepts that share a word are not the same (not to mention all the others differences). This is even so for what one might think as basic as dirt (which incidentally can also be “poussiere” in French, but then it is the kind you brush off, perhaps for those that do not pain pictures).
That’s what I want to think the person was asking, but they probably weren’t: “Do other languages call ‘earth’ (meaning soil) ‘earth’ (the planet)?”
But the person (incorrectly, in either case) capitalized ‘earth,’ so I think they were talking about whether other languages used the same name for our planet.
Earth is capitalized all the time when referring to the planet as an astronomical body. You wouldn’t write the list of planets as Mercury, Venus, earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
If I’m referring to the planet on which we live, I will capitalize - Earth. If I am referring to dirt, I will probably use a different word, but if stuck with that one will not capitalize - earth. This is because one is a proper noun and the other isn’t.
I’m fairly certain the standard for not capitalizing comes from the common use of the words earth, sun, and moon and his historical legacy. teuf said:
Sparky812 said:
I’m not certain, but I think the point is that French does not have other words that express those particular concepts like English does. Yes, earth means dirt or soil, but we also use the words dirt and soil. Does French have equivalents?
I know that’s the rule, but it doesn’t always hold. For example, if a spacefaring race in a science fiction book wants to visit our planet, they’ll refer to it as Earth, not earth. The context of the sentence is not as relevant as the context of the work.
You’re probably right about this guy, though. Still, I could easily see it being “Why do we call earth ‘Earth’?” as we do call it “Earth” quite often.
(Logically, we’d call it “Earth” unless preceded by the definite article, as it is being used as a name. This would make it fit better with uses such as “Mom” and “my mother.” As for the seasons–the only reason I can give them a pass is that they don’t refer to specific universal time periods. Outside the U.S., they start at various times other than the equinoxes and solstices.)
That was a very interesting question (that I was thinking of asking myself) that was very poorly handled by whoever answered it. Snark is cute but only if you can back it up with some useful info. That Staff Report would have gotten warned as a GQ answer.
FWIW, in Spanish, the name for the planet Earth (La Tierra) is also the word (tierra) for soil or dirt although there are also other words for soil and dirt (suelo, piso, polvo, etc).
I somehow expect this to hold true for all Romance or Latin languages but that’s mostly a guess.
In gardening we also use “le sol” to talk about soil.
We can say, “travailler la terre” or “la terre est trop acide”, but we’ll as often talk about “amender le sol” or “le sol est gelé”.
Running all this through the google language tool, it gives me: “work the land”,“the land is too acidic”, “soil amendment”, “the ground is frozen”.
And interestingly, I thought “dirt” mostly referred to what we call “saleté”, from “sale”, dirty, I had forgotten it’s also used to talk about ground/earth.
With all respect to Jill, that Staff Report was written way back in the balmy days when we were happy to get anything at all. She interpreted the question as “Is the word ‘earth’ pronounced ‘urth’ used for the planet in all languages?”
If someone would like to do a follow-up question, “The word ‘earth’ is used in English to mean both the soil (dirt) and the planet. Is that the case in other languages?” That would be a fun staff report, and I’d be happy to entertain a volunteer – contact me by email, tell me your credentials, and we’ll see where to go from there.
…to confuse things more Sol (lat.) and “Le Soleil” mean Sun!
I read the question as "Do other languages call Earth “earth”?
In other words… do other languages have names for the Earth that are not ground, soil, rock, dirt, synonyms.
I believe Jill may have misunderstood the questions due to the capitalization of both “Earths”.
In Hebrew, the name of the planet is “aretz”, and that word is also used for soil, dirt, and similar synonyms. It only just now (on reading the post about Dutch) occured to me how similar “earth” is to “aretz”.
Hebrew has another word, a synonym, “adamah”. Almost without exception, “aretz” is translated as “earth” or “Earth”, and “adamah” as “ground”. (“Adamah” is the word from which Adam got his name, as he was “made from the ground”.)
There can certainly be a variety of words for the stuff we walk on. In English (which admittedly tends to have lots more synomyns than many languages), we have soil, dirt, ground, land, and even (heh) terra firma. So the question would be, whether the word for the planet (in a language) also means soil/dirt/ground.
And, Sparky, I wouldn’t say that Jill “misinterpreted” the question: I think there’s two different intepretations, and she chose one. The posters in this thread seem to have chosen the other.
