Local words

The point of language is to communicate an idea.  I’ve always found it interesting that the same creature came up with different sounds for different things, even to the extent that some humans can’t make the sounds that other humans do.  (For example, some languages have trouble with “th” in English.  And no one but the Danes can manage “Rødgrød med fløde”)

Why did one set of people agree that a tree is called a “tree”, but another that it’s an “arbre”?

But then to complicate things even more, there are words that only exist in local regions within languages.  One of the biggest debates between people in the UK is what this is called:

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I’d call that a batch.  A lot of people would call it a bread roll.  Some people call it a cob, others a bun, and if you go to Bradford it’s a teacake (seriously, Bradford?!)

So can you get away with local words when writing?  Maybe.  Even though I maintain it’s a batch, if I mentioned one in my story, I’d probably not call it that, because I know that anyone from outside of the Midlands would get confused. 

But maybe I could get away with “scraze”?  That’s what we call what others would call a graze.  I guess it came about as a cross between scrape and graze. 

I suppose this leads onto the question of why I want to use local words at all, and not the “proper” ones in the dictionary.

Well there are two reasons:

One is, characters don’t just use words out of the dictionary.  They have their own words for things, and probably have a few good regional ones of their own.

Two is, the dictionary isn’t language.  It’s a reference for all those words that people made up.  And some words haven’t been made up yet.

So make sure you don’t get in a mardy.  I’m off to eat a batch in the spinney!