BTW, you'll notice I used both "BF" and "nursing" in my last post. Sorry
to revive an old thread, but I didn't get a chance to get on last time,
and someone said to leave the spelling of breastfeeding to the English
majors.
I was a French major, but did my PhD in comparative lit. and am a
copy-editor: does that count?
breastfeeding is listed in the spelling dictionary the publishing
company I work for and several other Canadian companies use, with a
hyphen. It appeared in the last ms I worked on almost simultaneously
with that thread. I simply attached a post-it to my managing editor
saying that although the OCSP (Oxford Can. Sp. Dict.) said
breast-feeding "everyone I know in the field spells it breastfeeding."
I'll let you know what happens, once I find out.
Also in the dictionary I use, "nurse" v. is defined in the first
instance as to feed and suckle a baby at the breast. I believe the
profession developed this name from the mothering activity ("wet nurse"
being earlier than a registered nurse, I imagine) rather than
separately, and I don't see why it would lay claim to it. I don't use it
for English-major-type reasons, though, and not because I'm shy (heck, I
BF everywhere!) but because it was what my mother said, and I treasure
the connection.
In French, "allaiter" is the "proper" term, (see "lait" for "milk" in
there?) as in Spanish, and "allaitement maternel" adds the precision in
case of doubt. But in popular speech, someone can ask "Est-ce que tu le
nourris?" which really just means, "are you feeding him?" since nourrir
is what you use for all types of feeding, but it is understood as
nursing (after all, how else are you going to feed a baby?)
In German, the term is "stillen" which (as those of you who know "Stille
Nacht, Heilige Nacht" know) means "to quiet" or "to calm" or "to make
peaceful".
Sorry for the lesson! Once in a while my past life slips out...
Jo-Anne, whose seven-year-olds are almost certifiably bilingual, now,
and correcting her bad pronunciation of French.

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