[Quiet Man Cometh]

Originally Posted by Espy

And if you do end up using words like "pianoforte" or "chemise", well, you're writing for an audience that's a stranger to the world you've built, and those words are just a means by which to make it easier for /them/ to understand things.

I disagree with this as far as those are pretty specific words. A pianoforte is a specific type of instrument, and an old way of referring to one. Unless the thing actually is a piano, why not be more general and call it a keyboard?

I agree that consistent language use is important, and more so than individual words, but I do find it jarring when I'm reading something that's not supposed to be Earth set and suddenly a very "Earthian" term shows up. A violin an exist in fantasy just fine, but if someone pulls out a Stradivarius I'm going to blink a few times and wonder what happened.