I used to worry a lot, if I was writing fantasy for example, about using words like ‘philistine’, which means according to Google
‘a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts’.
It’s also of course a reference to a historical people and to The Bible, so wouldn’t really make sense for someone from a world where those things don’t exist to say it, would it?
But then if I really wanted to be realistic none of the characters should speak english at all. I guess I just assume when reading or writing these everything has been translated into terms we understand. Similar to how in something like Star Trek it’s always assumed that when someone says ‘years’ they mean Earth years rather than Romulus years.
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