Belter Creole
Belter Creole, also simply known as Belter, is a constructed language developed by the linguist and polyglot 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. While developing the language, he had modeled it as a creole based on English, with influence from 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, Arabic, Hebrew, Zulu and others. As a result of his work, Farmer had 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 had appeared for the first time in the book Leviathan Wakes, the first book in The Expanse series, published under the pen name James S. A. Corey that has been used by the collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Following that, Belter Creole continued to appear in the subsequent books in the series. The language presented in the books greatly varied from the one later developed by Nick Farmer. It 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 in 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. As the language was later developed 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, a co-author of the series of books that the TV series was based on, 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.
Developing the language, Farmer had modeled it 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. As the result of his work, Farmer had 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 Nick 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 would introduce to the show the concepts of code switching and English spoken as a second language as paradigms of Belter Creole and culture.
The show's producers had emphasized that they did not want to use subtitles for Lang Belta, but rather wanted the audience to be capable of dialogue comprehension via recognizable phonological similarities to English words/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 would always make 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 had 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. Since the production of the pilot, looping voice actors were taught belter language by Armstrong.
As the language gained popularity, Nick Farmer had started regularly revealing new words and grammar functions on his Twitter account. He also had given language lessons to the fans during meet-ups.
Phonology
Orthography and pronunciation
According to the creator of the language, Nick Farmer, in the universe of The Expanse there's 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 Nick Farmer to write down Belter Creole in the TV series script and his Twitter posts includes 24 letters of the Latin script. The letters are:
| Uppercase letters | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| Lowercase letters | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | k | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
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 and condenashang, which usually are spelled, respectively, as kopeng and kondenashang.
Farmer also uses the turned alpha 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 would be ɒkwa.
| Letter | Pronunciation | Belter example | English example | Notes | Source |
| a | /æ/ | kuxaku | cat | ||
| ɒ | /ɒ/ | ɒkwa | no't thought | Rarer variant spelling, alternative to ⟨ow⟩ | |
| b | /b/ | beratna | ab'ack | ||
| c | /k/ | copeng | kiss | Rarely used spelling variant, alternative to ⟨k⟩ | |
| ch | /t͡ʃ/ | chek | chew | ||
| d | /d/ | dansa | dash | ||
| dzh | /d͡ʒ/ | nadzhush | jump | ||
| e | /e/ | te'ki | may | ||
| f | /f/ | fut | fill | ||
| g | /g/ | gova | globe | ||
| h | /x/ | hamma | loch | Similar to ⟨h⟩ in English here; rarely used variant spelling, alternative to ⟨x⟩ | |
| i | /i/ | li't | machine | ||
| k | /k/ | kopeng | kiss | ||
| l | /l/ | lang | let | ||
| m | /m/ | mang | him | ||
| n | /n/ | nada | mon'th | ||
| ng | /ŋ/ | nating | sing | ||
| ny | /ɲ/ | xunyam | Similar to ⟨ny⟩ in English canyon | ||
| o | /o/ | ora | yawn | ||
| ow | /ɒ/ | owkwa | not thought | ||
| p | /p/ | pelésh | pack | ||
| r | /ɾ/ | retnet | better | ||
| s | /s/ | salta | sand | ||
| sh | /ʃ/ | seteshang | sheep | ||
| t | /t/ | tenye | trouble | ||
| u | /u/ | unte | boot | ||
| v | /v/ | liv'it | very | ||
| w | /w/ | wit | weep | ||
| x | /x/ | xiya | loch | Similar to ⟨h⟩ in English here | |
| y | /j/ | ya | yes | ||
| z | /z/ | zakong | 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 which means love, ⟨é⟩ in idzhifobék which means weak, ⟨ó⟩ in belówt which means blood, and ⟨ú⟩ in gútegow which means ready.
| Uppercase letters | Á | É | Ó | Ú |
| Lowercase letters | á | é | ó | ú |