Lessons from a Stump

I've been looking at this stump for over two months since my wife felled the red palm that had graced our little garden for about 18 years. This once tall leggy beauty has now been reduced to a midgety dull, prosaic stump, standing there daily in our garden in stoical silence. Despite having been brought down from her lofty heights, she never complains- not a hush, nor a rustle; how could she. anyway, when she's been shorn of her glorious green plumage. No, no, I'm not getting sentimental over her loss; I'm no tree-hugging nature lover. One day, for no apparent reason, I decided to take a close look at her, and this is what I find most amazing: even in her death throes, she's giving life to others-tiny plants sprouting to life and feeding off her. Walaoyeh!

Sun, Earth, Moon...When Do We Capitalise?

A reader wrote in to Mind Our English (Star2, Thursday 21st July) about when to capitalise sun, moon and earth. Fadzillah Amin, MOE's language adviser answered: There are no hard and fast rules about when to capitalise the first letters of these words and when not to.

There is indeed a grammar rule which states that proper nouns are capitalised. Examples of proper nouns are Karim, Malaysia, Mumbai, Sungai Pahang, etc. So, the names of the planets, stars and constellations are spelt with capital letters: Earth,Sun, Venus, Mercury, Leo, the Milky Way, etc. However, we say the earth, the moon, and the sun unless of course when they are personified. Remember, personification? When you personify an idea or an inanimate object, it means you are investing it with human qualities. Thus, in HD Carberry's poem, Nature, the four seasons are personified: Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn.

Therefore, when we apply the rule of capitalizing proper nouns, we'll have to disagree with the example that Fadzillah Amin quoted from a NASA website: The strategic placement  permits constant observation of spacecraft as the Earth rotates on its own axis. Here, the Earth should be spelled in lower case as the earth. She's right when she said: The case of the moon is different. Earth has only one moon, and in ordinary writing, we call it the moon... So it's more common to use the moon, and we don't ever call it Moon without the before it, as we call earth without the.

Again, when she quoted NASA to justify her explanation, we should disagree with her: NASA, however, uses initial capitals for all three space objects, i.e. the Sun, the Moon and the Earth...Is it OK in scientific writing to break grammar rules? I don't think so.

He Had Such Quiet Eyes - -by Bibsy Soenharjo

The poem He Had Such Quiet Eyes is about the naivety of a young woman who fell in love too hastily. The poet describes the man’s quiet eyes as two pools of lies/Layered with thinnest ice. One immediately sees the vivid image of a cool, young man... 


Nature - by Hugh Doston Carberry

Overview

This poem can be taken quite literally. The poet tells us that Jamaica does not have the four seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn. Nature records the poet’s observations of the amazing beauty of nature in his homeland. Even though it doesn’t have the four seasons...

 Critical Analysis- What it really means

This lovely poem by Hugh Doston Carberry is a celebration of the beauty of nature. The first four lines spell out the difference between the Jamaican climate and the climate in temperate countries: Jamaica, like Malaysia, doesn’t have the four seasons; instead it is a tropical country with sunshine and seasonal rains. The four seasons are capitalized....

To read the analyses of all the four poems, please refer to Complete Guide to SPM English 1119 Literature for 2011 exam. Only RM2.99!