Oh, I tend to sidestep a lot of that entirely. Rather than saying "the axe embedded itself in the wall mere inches from Lord Calderich's face," I write "the axe embedded itself in the wall a hairbreadth from Lord Calderich's face."

Instead of "a few feet away," I might say he stood "an arm’s length" or "a few paces" away.

And “Earth” always gets replaced—it's soil, dirt, or ground, depending on tone. “Damp earth” becomes “damp soil,” and no one ever “kicks up earth”—they kick up dirt.

I do tend to use more Earth-like colloquialisms, but I try to vary them by region and avoid anything that wouldn’t make sense in Heimshulan culture. It also helps that many of the characters come from very different social classes. The protagonist is an orphan, but she’s well educated—raised and trained to be a priest. As she travels, she ends up spending a lot of time around nobles from another nation, who speak in a much more aristocratic way. She also encounters commoners in more rural villages, where the manner of speaking is noticeably different—more grounded, practical, and sometimes a bit rough around the edges.

I’ve also included two characters who break the mold: one is enigmatic and clearly well-traveled, and the other comes from an entirely different culture{Highlight to read} —eventually revealed to be from another planet with distant Earth origins.

As for “earth,” I debated using it to describe soil or ground, but ultimately chose to avoid it. The people of this world have long forgotten about Earth{Highlight to read} —it’s only known to certain ahem well-traveled characters. Even then, it’s only referred to as “Earth” once in the entire story, and for a very good reason. Everywhere else, it’s known as Midgard.

Most of the animals are pretty unusual. Furdigs, my horse analogs, are larger than typical horses—think Clydesdales—with clawed feet and manes made of flaps of skin. Yuggas are the dog equivalent: small and round, with soft fur, large black eyes, and short snouts. Ulfas are bulky, reptilian-esque pack animals with massive humps on their backs. Kura are large, pink herbivores raised for both their wool and meat. The world also has twin moons—one red, one blue—that appear the same size in the night sky and are often referred to collectively as the Twin Moons.

My setting is also heavily Nordic-inspired—descendants of Viking-age Norse who ended up on another world. They speak a language called Nelvii, and their magic system is entirely rune-based: each spell requires a rune, a physical resource (like ash, water, or air), and a spoken invocation. More advanced practitioners can shortcut this by imbuing weapons (like swords, staffs, wands—or in the protagonist’s case, an axe) with magical energy, though the invocation is still required. The invocation itself is usually a compound word drawn from Old Norse or Icelandic roots. Even their curses and insults follow the same linguistic logic. I actually developed my own rune system to support it.

I’ve also fleshed out systems for currency, measurement, and even named the days and months—though most of that only appears in passing. The closest I get to using height as a metric is by noting relative size—like describing one character as “a head taller” than another—rather than using formal units.

Mythologically, the culture diverges from real-world Norse beliefs, and there’s a strong in-world explanation for that. The gods they worship are different, and their stories reflect deeper themes woven into the world’s cosmology.

That said, I do have one character who speaks English—and there’s a solid lore reason for it. She occasionally drops Earth slang or insults, usually earning confused looks. The protagonist even ends up adopting a few of her "weird" curses.

Well, thank you.

And no worries—I just thought it was funny (and a little ironic) that I spend all this time agonizing over these worldbuilding details while writing a story in a language that’s completely foreign to the people it’s actually about.