question to Sobar,iwonabp and experts

I'm in a slight dither about the usage of THE with planets and stars. Not being an astronomer myself, I know that we say and write THE Sun, THE Moon, THE Earth. Why do we say Pluto, Jupiter, Mars and Venus without THE? I know that the title of the famous book by John Gray is "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", and I'm pretty sure he meant planets, not ancient gods. Is it because the "nearer" planets are more familiar? I can't come up with a digestible rule in this case, so perhaps you can help me and cite the rule and the reference. I couldn't find the rule in a number of reference books!

my first thought: sun, moon and earth are common nouns and thus need an article to show that we mean the sun, moon, earth that relevant to us, earthlings. The other names of planets are proper names.

mg is correct in that proper nouns (names) are not, as a rule, preceded by the article "the".

However, we often see Earth referred to as "the Earth", which is incorrect. Example:"Friends of the Earth" (an international environmental organization). This should properly be "Friends of Earth". "The earth" means: soil.

>"The earth" means: soil.

Does it?
A lump of earth, NOT a lump of the earth.

"a lump of earth" is similar to "the lump of earth". In the first case we refer to any lump, in the second to a specific lump. In both cases the articles "a" and "the" apply to "lump", the adjective. Ergo, when you insert an adjective or modifier, the article moves to the front of the phrase. Other examples:

the grass - the clump of grass - not: clump of the grass
a coin - a collection of coins - not: collection of the coins
the man - the rude man - not: rude the man

In both cases the articles "a" and "the" apply to "lump", the adjective.

Sir, "lump" is not an adjective. The rest of what you say is equally meaningless. Your examples do not allow one to draw any coherent conclusions.

i'm sure the difference between 'a lump of earth' and 'the lump of earth' is obvious to MG. You really didn't have to explain that to him/us

but we are not talking about the difference of a / the meaning sth is definite or nondefinite, mentioned for the first time or second, etc

I would say that we use 'THE' when referring to sth that is 'one of a kind', e.g.
the sun, the moon, the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, etc

In the case of particular planets we don't use THE (although we say the planets) MAYBE because they are proper nouns. I say maybe, because some proper nouns are written with the, some aren't.

we cannot apply a definition or a rule to every single grammatical problem
sometimes it's just the way we say sth (the Brits say sth :)) and it's hard to say why...

"Friends of the Earth" is OK, and it does not have to mean "Friends of the Planet Earth."
The lowercase "earth" in "the earth" means "our earth, the earth we live on."
The uppercased "Earth" in the name of the organization is probably the result of the rule that calls for capitalizing essential words in proper names. Following the same rule, I have capitalized "Planet."
You could say "There are many environmentalists who consider themselves friends of the earth."
When you capitalize (no article) Earth, you mean the planet Earth. The capitalized article-free Earth is common when the earth is being referred to in astronomical terms, but both ways are OK: Earth and the earth.
A side note: if it ain't capitalized, it ain't a proper name; however, I cannot see anything wrong with "the Earth," where "the" stands for "our, the one we live on."

Myślę, choć nie musi tak być, że nazwy planet oznaczja nie tylko ich nazwy ale są również imionami starażytnych bogów lub mają jeszcz inne znaczenia. Jeśli chodzi o słońce i księżyc to sa to nazwy stosowane tylko w odniesieniu do tych konkretnych rzeczy.

I would like to thank everybody for their comments, however, not all of them were to the point. Linguists seem to have overlooked this problem :)
I wonder what Sobar can tell us about it...KRGDS

You got me there!! - your powers of observation are acute. Lump is not an adjective indeed. However, it is a modifier to "earth", and the "the" associated with earth indeed moves to the front of the phrase, which is still as it should be.

No. When "earth" means "gleba" it does not have to take an article.
'We were lying on wet earth' is fine.

BTW: what means 'were to the point' ? Should we say 'came to the point' ?

I didnt' ask: what is the problem with linguists' answers ?

'were to the point' is ok - that means sth was relevant to the original topic (question)

to the point - na temat

come to the point - przejść do sedna sprawy

I thank you for your high regard. However, as I have revealed somewhere else in the forum, I'm only a certificate-less self-learner and a keen amateur in the field of languages, and I cannot claim to any substantial expertise. I try to help where I think I can, but even in those cases I err not quite rarely. I sometimes stick to my point and come to argue with the likes of MG, XL, or IwonaBP, but this should not lead anyone to false conclusion about my status here.

Shortly moving over to your question now: I believe MG's first answer exhausts my view on this.

Sobar,

I'm also certificate-less person (as you put it) and your exaple can be a proof that you don't have to be a university graduate or in possession of any certificate to be excellent in English. To me your command is really impressive, as is mg's, xl's and loads of other people i'm not gonna list here.

I may sometimes propose a different alternative to what you've written here - but that doesn't mean criticising or , God forbid, looking down on you or others.

and one more thing, I don't consider myself an expert, am actually far from being one

There are lots of exceptions, granted, but it's not incorrect to say" we were lying on the wet earth" either.

Which shows that the context decides whether or not to use 'the' with 'earth' meaning 'soil'. You said gleba = THE earth, and you were wrong.

gleba = earth, but a proper sentence would be for example: "the earth in my garden is dry".

"the earth in my garden "
the jest tu uzyte w ten sam sposob, w jakim jest uzyte w wyrazeniu
the books in my room
the people sitting next to me
Nie ma to NIC wspolnego z uparcie wysuwanym przez Ciebie twierdzeniem, ze zplaneta ziemia to tylko earth, a gleba to the earth.

cofam moje uparcie, poniewaz chyba niescisle predstawilem moje mysli. Dam na to ze w przykladzie, powiedzmy, "Friends of the the Earth", jest to potocznie zrozumiane ze chodzi o "Friends of the Earth".

"the Earth" wg mnie chodzi tu o "the people of Earth"

that might be "Friends of the Earthlings"...

>jest to potocznie zrozumiane ze chodzi o "Friends of the
> Earth".

A nie powinno byc tak rozumiane?