Fall has fallen!

放大圖片

　■慶祝過中秋節後，我們將迎接冬季來臨。資料圖片

What's up?　We celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival exactly two weeks ago. So, since each season has three months, we should be having the last month of Autumn from now onwards. In fact, according to the Chinese lunar ( = of the moon) calendar, the commencement ( = beginning) of winter this year is November 7, which is about a month from now.

　Pronunciation error

　How do you pronounce the word 'autumn'? It seems many Hong Kongers read it like 'OCT-tum' - which is in fact wrong! Actually, the first syllable ( = a single unit of speech) of 'autumn' is a long 'OUGHT', rather than a short 'OCT'. So the whole word is pronounced 'OUGHT-tum'. A word similar to 'autumn' is 'August', in the sense that the first syllable of 'August' is also pronounced a long 'OUGHT' - though many Hong Kong people mispronounce ( = wrongly pronounce) it as a short 'OCT'! - that is, many people mispronounce 'August' as 'OCT-gust'.

　Also, can you tell which letter of 'autumn' is silent? The answer is the letter N.

Autumn = old age

　Poets often use metaphors ( = expressions which describe a thing by referring to another thing) to talk about various objects or concepts. A famous American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) has written a poem called Autumn Within. It begins with these 4 lines:

It is autumn; not without

But within me is the cold.

Youth and spring are all about;

It is I that have grown old.

　Do you understand what Longfellow means by these words? He uses different seasons as a metaphor for the different stages of a person's life: spring as a metaphor for youth, and autumn as a metaphor for old age. The word 'without' in the first line does not mean 'not having something', but 'outside' as contrast ( = opposite or obvious difference) to the word 'within' ( = inside) in the second line. Here, autumn does not refer to the outside season, but the poet's inside world. Don't you find it poetic ( = a beautiful way to express emotions)?

Autumn = fall

　The term 'autumn' is mainly used by the British. How about the Americans? They usually use the word 'fall'. Why is autumn also called 'fall'? It's an abbreviation ( = shortened form) of the terms 'fall of the leaf' or 'fall of the year'. The first term is not difficult to understand, but what's the meaning of 'fall of the year'? Probably since the year begins in spring, and then summer follows, and so autumn is the the beginning of the second half of the year, and hence is 'fall of the year'.

　As you may probably know already, 'fall' is also a verb, and can mean to appear or to come. So, we can play with this word and say: Fall has fallen! - which means that autumn has come already! - in fact it's gradually leaving us now!　■作者：MT Ness

Questions

1. What is the Fall, with a capital F? It can also be called the Fall of what?

2. A fall guy is not an autumn man! What kind of person is (s)he?

3. Can you guess why the first season of the year is called 'spring'?

Answers

1. The Fall: the occasion when Adam and Eve were sent to leave the Garden of Eden. It can also be called the Fall of Man.

2. A fall guy is a person wrongly blamed for someone else's mistakes.

3. 'Spring' means 'spring ( = beginning) of the year'.