 Wwwdotcom wrote: |
If you are out in space, you can see the earth, the moon, and the sun. Why can't we say, "we can see the Jupiter" or "the Mars", "the Venus", "the Neptune", etc...?
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I've been thinking over this question since I read it. Historically speaking even in the time of Chaucer, they did not put THE before the names of celestial bodies like Mercury, Venus, Mars or Jupiter. I feel it might be a result of translation from Latin documents, although the French influence could be also reckoned as the cause. What is interesting is, however, that Shakespeare and some of his contemporary writers used phrases like "the Venus" or "the Mars". So the rule of no THE for planets other than "the Earth" seems to have somehow swayed in the past history of the English language. But in the current English they seldom say "the Venus". Even in the case "Venus" is modified by an adjective like "bright", they commonly say "bright Venus", not "the bright Venus".
Celestial bodies Names of other planets and stars are proper nouns and begin with a capital letter: "The planet Mars can be seen tonight in the constellation Gemini, near the star Pollux."
The words sun, earth, and moon are proper nouns when the sentence uses them in an astronomical context, but not elsewhere: so "The Sun is a main sequence star, with a spectral class of G2"; but "It was a lovely day and the sun was warm". Note that these terms are only proper nouns when referring to a specific celestial body (our Sun, Earth and Moon): so "The Moon orbits the Earth"; but "Pluto's moon Charon".
-From
Wiki's Manual of Style paco