Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 August 2

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August 2

Is "abortionist" offensive

An IP editor here has changed "abortionist" to "abortion care provider" for a GP in a Surname page. I'm inclined to revert it as a longwinded and pretentious MOS:EUPHEMISM but not sure of my ground. Doug butler (talk) 04:36, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the edit, "abortion provider" is more standard. Andrevan@ 04:38, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• Then shouldn't it say "abortion provider", without "care"? --174.95.81.219 (talk) 00:48, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

  Either one, but abortionist has a negative connotation. "Abortion service provider" works too I think. Andrevan@ 01:13, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Oxford Dictionaries:

abortionist

noun

derogatory

A person who carries out abortions (typically applied to someone not working in a hospital, or used to convey disapproval of abortion).

Wiktionary gives three senses, labelled, respectively, with crime, derogatory, and offensive.  --Lambiam 08:57, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

It would be instructive to read the Robert Spencer (doctor) article and note that he was doing abortions illegally at the time. Also, various newspapers (including the L.A. Times) labeled him an "abortionist". So the question is whether we go by reliable sources, or by more recent euphemisms. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:14, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Contentious labels says, "Value-laden labels...may express contentious opinion and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution." Furthermore, we should avoid ambiguity. The term can, per wiktionary, refer to "One who performs an illegal abortion in a non-medical setting (a back street, a hotel room, etc)."[1] In the case of Dr. Robert Spencer, we don't even know if the abortions he performed were illegal, because he was never convicted, and the law he was tried under may not itself have been legal. TFD (talk) 13:02, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks all. Back when I might have been concerned with such matters (Australia, 1960s), abortion was illegal but the practitioner was no more a pariah than the S.P. bookmaker or sly grog seller. Doug butler (talk) 21:45, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Engelmacher was a German word for it and it implies (in my humble opinion) murderer or at least Totschläger (killer, slayer).--Ralfdetlef (talk) 18:40, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Postalveolar articulation

Are there any languages where there exist phonemic distinction between alveolar and postalveolar sounds also in other manners of articulation than fricatives and affricates, for example that alveolar and postalveolar trills would be separate phonemes? 40bus (talk) 17:00, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

According to our article Voiced dental, alveolar and postalveolar trills, in Catalan phonology the phoneme /ɾ/ (phonetically the apical front alveolar [ɾ̺]) contrasts with /r/ (the postalveolar [r̺]).  --Lambiam 18:46, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

However, the former is a tap while the latter is a trill (only the latter is listed in that page). --Theurgist (talk) 10:58, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

There are dialects of Irish (see Irish phonology) in which (palatalized) alveolar /nʲ/ and /lʲ/ contrast with (palatalized) postalveolar /n̠ʲ/ and /l̠ʲ/. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:18, 3 August 2022 (UTC)