Belter Creole, also simply known as Belter (Belter Creole: ), is a constructed language developed by linguist Nick Farmer for The Expanse television series. In the story's universe, it is spoken by Belters, the inhabitants of the asteroid belt and the moons of outer planets of the Solar System.
Farmer was commissioned to create the language during the productions of the first season of the show, between 2014 and 2015. He modeled it as a creole based on English, with influence from other languages from around the world, including Romance languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian, Germanic languages such as German, Dutch and Swedish, Slavic languages such as Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Japanese, Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Zulu and others. As a result of his work, Farmer created over 1000 words for his language, adding more to the list if requested by the show's producers and fans.
Development The concept of the language appeared for the first time in the book Leviathan Wakes (2011), the first book in The Expanse series by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck under the pen name James S.A. Corey. Belter Creole continued to appear in the subsequent books in the series. The language presented in the books lacked developed vocabulary as well as grammar, phonological, and orthographic systems. It was a mix of words taken from various languages and was mostly presented as a dialect mixed with the English dialogue, "to give the reader a sense of being excluded from this culture".
The vocabulary used in the books was chosen by the authors on the basis of aesthetics and was not originally intended to form a real language. When the language was later developed more fully for The Expanse television series, the authors of the novel series discouraged fans from learning their version of the language in favor of the television one.
Nick Farmer, a linguist and a polyglot, was commissioned to develop the constructed language for the television series, during the production of its first season between 2014 and 2015. Farmer was recommended for the job by Ty Franck, as both had worked together before.
Inside the universe of The Expanse, which is set around 200 years in the future, the language is used by Belters, the inhabitants of the asteroid belt and the moons of outer planets of the Solar System. The language had developed during the colonization of the Asteroid Belt, firstly starting as the pidgin spoken by people who came to the colonies from Earth speaking in various languages from all around the world. With next generations, the language had developed into the creole. The language had various dialects and accents, that would vary from one location to another. According to Farmer, the vocabulary and grammar rules, present in the show, and revealed by the author himself, were a dialect used on Ceres.
Farmer modeled the language as a creole based on English, with influence of other languages from all around the world, including Romance languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian, Germanic languages such as German, Dutch, and Swedish, Slavic languages such as Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian, as well as Japanese, Chinese, Persian, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, Zulu, and others. Farmer created over 1000 words for his language, adding more to the list if requested by show's producers and fans.
The pronunciation of the language was developed by Farmer and Eric Armstrong, a dialect coach. During development, they came to the conclusion that the language's pronunciation and tone had become too similar to that of Jamaican English. As a result, Armstrong suggested that Farmer make various modifications to the phonological, morphological, and lexicological characteristics, such that the language's overall sound gave an impression that it derived via an amalgamation of several existent languages and cultures of a near-future, homogeneous working-class population. They accomplished this goal by fusing together various elements of multiple real-world cants, dialects, and accents to form distinct types of Belter drawls or sounds and then encouraged the actors to choose one which fit their character. Additionally, the producers were advised to deliberately create a cast of actors and actresses who spoke in varying accent types so as to illustrate real-world concepts observed in societies and cultures where creole and pidgin languages are spoken. For example, in Season 3, actors Dominique Tipper and Cara Gee introduced the concepts of code switching and English spoken as a second language as paradigms of Belter Creole and culture.
The show's producers did not want to use subtitles when Belter Creole was used, but wanted the audience to be capable of dialogue comprehension via recognizable phonological similarities to English words and phrases, and contextual inference. Due to that, for most of its appearances, the language was presented only as various words mixed in the English dialogue. During the show production, Farmer made three versions of the lines for the script, one entirely in the Belter, one with medium Belter influence, and one with light usage of the Belter. Then, actors would learn and shoot all three variants of the scenes, and later the producers would choose which version they wanted to use.
The language appeared for the first time in "Dulcinea", the pilot episode of The Expanse, that premiered in 2015, and regularly appeared in the show throughout its six seasons.Terry McDonough (director) Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby (writers). "Dulcinea". The Expanse. Season 1. Episode 1. November 23, 2015. Syfy. Since the production of the pilot, looping voice actors were taught belter language by Armstrong.
As the language gained popularity, Farmer started regularly revealing new words and grammar functions on his Twitter account. He also gave language lessons to the fans during meet-ups.
Phonology Orthography and pronunciation According to Farmer, in the universe of The Expanse there is no standardized orthography of the language; variants are used in different parts of the asteroid belt and the outer planets. Additionally, although all of Farmer's posts, and all the appearances of the language in written form in the TV series, are written in the Latin script, according to Farmer Belter Creole can also be written with other writing systems.
The standard alphabet used by Farmer to write down Belter Creole in the TV series script and his Twitter posts includes 24 letters of the Latin script, omitting J and Q from the standard 26-letter alphabet of the English language.
Additionally, Farmer's script includes five digraphs, ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨ny⟩, ⟨ow⟩, and ⟨sh⟩, as well as one trigraph, ⟨dzh⟩. Letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨h⟩ are present only in the digraphs ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨sh⟩, and in trigraph ⟨dzh⟩, while ⟨j⟩ and ⟨q⟩ are present only in the loanwords. As an exception, the letter ⟨c⟩ is sometimes used in place of ⟨k⟩, for example in words such as copeng ("friend") and condenashang ("condemnation"), which are usually spelled, respectively, as kopeng and kondenashang.
Farmer also uses the turned alpha (capital: ⟨Ɒ⟩, lowercase: ⟨ɒ⟩) as an alternative spelling of the digraph ⟨ow⟩, which is used to represent the open back rounded vowel sound. For example, the alternative spelling of the word owkwa ("water") would be ɒkwa.
+ Pronunciation Letter Pronunciation Belter example(translation) English example Notes Source a /æ/ kuxaku(space, vacuum) cat (US) ɒ /ɒ/ ɒkwa(water) not (RP)thought (US) Rarer variant spelling, alternative to ⟨ow⟩ b /b/ beratna(brother) aback c /k/ copeng(friend) kiss Rarely used spelling variant, alternative to ⟨k⟩ ch /t͡ʃ/ chek(to check) chew d /d/ dansa(to dance) dash dzh /d͡ʒ/ nadzhush(tired) jump e /e/ teki(technology) may f /f/ fut(food) fill g /g/ gova(head) globe h /x/ hamma(inescapabletorpedo range) loch (Scottish) Similar to ⟨h⟩ in English here;rarely used variant spelling, alternative to ⟨x⟩ i /i/ lit(to read) machine k /k/ kopeng(friend) kiss l /l/ lang(language) let m /m/ mang(person) him n /n/ nada(zero) month ng /ŋ/ nating(nothing) sing ny /ɲ/ xunyam(to study, learn) Similar to ⟨ny⟩ in English canyon o /o/ ora(hour) yawn ow /ɒ/ owkwa(water) not (RP)thought (US) p /p/ pelésh(place) pack r /ɾ/ retnet(network) better (US) s /s/ salta(leap, jump) sand sh /ʃ/ seteshang(station) sheep t /t/ tenye(to own) trouble u /u/ unte(and) boot v /v/ livit(life) very w /w/ wit(with) weep x /x/ xiya(here) loch (Scottish) Similar to ⟨h⟩ in English here y /j/ ya(yes) yes z /z/ zakong(law) zoo
The acute accent placed above the letters ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ is used to indicate different than usual stress in the word pronunciation. Example of such are ⟨á⟩ in ámolof (/'æmo.lof/) which means love, ⟨é⟩ in idzhifobék (/id͡ʒi.fo'bek/) which means weak, ⟨ó⟩ in belówt (/be'lɒt/) which means blood, and ⟨ú⟩ in gútegow (/'gut.te.gɒ/) which means ready.
+ Letters with diacriticsUppercase lettersÁÉÓÚLowercase lettersáéóú
Epenthesis and elision When forming compounds, epenthetic vowels are sometimes added to the words. Such vowels are ⟨a⟩ and, less commonly, ⟨e⟩. Examples of such changes are: bek + da + bush → bekedabúsh na + kang + pensa → nakangepensa tung + ting → túngeting im + lowda → imalowda
Consonants at the morpheme boundary can be also elided instead. Examples of such changes are: kowl + mang → kowmang zakong + mang → zákomang
Stress In most cases the primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable of a word. For example, in: showxa (/'ʃɒ.xæ/) seteshang (/se'te.ʃæŋ/) gufovedi (/gu.fo've.di/)
If the stress for a particular word is on a different syllable, this is indicated with an addition of the acute accent above the letters ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩. Examples of such words are: ámolof (/'æ.mo.lof/) idzhifobék (/id͡ʒi.fo'bek/) belówt (/be'lɒt/)
When forming compound words, the stress often remains on the head of the compound, which sometimes requires the addition of an accent mark: zakong (/'za.koŋ/) → zákomang (/'zako.mæŋ/) gut (/gut/) → gútegow (/'gut.t.egɒ/) tung (/tuŋ/) → túngeting (/'tuŋ.e.tiŋ/)
Grammar Nouns and adjectives Nouns are not inflected for grammatical number. For example, mang can mean both a person and people. The quantity is instead determined by the presence of quantifiers or numerals, or inferred from context. For example wang mang means one person and tu mang means two people. The exceptions are the pronouns, which have both singular and plural forms.
Adjectives are placed after the nouns they modify, for example in setara mali, which means little star.
Nouns can also serve as adjectives, and so follow the nouns they modify. For example, diye beref, which means birthday, is formed from the words diye, meaning day, and beref, meaning birth.
Verbs Many verbs can be formed from nouns by adding du, meaning do and make, before of the noun. For example, adding du before the noun ámolof, which translates to the noun love, will form du ámolof, which translates to the verb love. Additionally, in a few cases, adding the prefix du- to a verb can change its meaning. For example, adding it to the verb sensa, which means feel, produces du-sensa, which means apologize.
Articles Belter Creole has two articles: indefinite wa, corresponding to English a and an, and definite da, corresponding to English the.
The indefinite article wa is used to mark an indefinite noun phrase. A noun phrase with an indefinite article does not refer to a specific entity. For example, the sentence Tenye wa diye beref gut. means Have a happy birthday.