Question: I asked [a question](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/1754/how-do-you-prepare-cook-kohl-rabi) , because I'd search for "kohl rabi" which is what the ingredient is called over here, and not found anything.

I suspect there are hundreds of differences in ingredient names (what is shortening?), or even cooking methods (what is a broiler?) Which I fear may limit the effectiveness of the site without tweaking the search to allow for the synonyms out there -- either that or there needs to be a **lot** of editing to keep this site being relevant to a worldwide audience.

What do you think can be done to keep this applicable to a worldwide audience?

Answer: 
The general population seems to be north American, as best I can tell from the vocabulary commonly used (I understand most of it). This may initially be confusing to new members from other countries, but one of two things will happen:

1) Foreign visitors will come and be too confused by the terminology to effectively use the site, and use vernacular that the board as a whole doesn't understand, resulting in their questions dieing with low views and no answers. They will be forced to join the common language or not use the system.

2) Mutual education will happen, where the American users will google the terms posted when confusing and figure things out. Mods, familiar with numerous regional dialects, will re-tag with whatever they deem appropriate. The community chugs along and everyone learns something new.

I like 2. Something between these will probably happen. It'll be interesting to see what the hive mind comes up with. 

Maybe the meta would be a place to create a taxonomy of international differences in food vocabulary. Or is that appropriate for the main board?
Not much can be done I don't think. We could tag things with the different names, but I think we'll be using up a lot of tags for that. It's also unreasonable to expect a questioner to learn what *everyone else* in the world calls something.

For example, I had a question about pork rinds. I never knew that there were 3 different names for them. Apparently scratchings in the UK and crackle in Australia & NZ. Another big one is grilling. Well, what *Americans* calls grilling. Apparently everywhere else in the world a grill is called a barbecue, but barbecue to many Americans is a very specific way to cook meat.

Given the tools we currently have, I think the best way is for zealous editors to help out by adding other terms in footnotes.