User:Artemis Andromeda/sandbox/Belter Creole

Belter Creole
Lang Belta
Created by	Nick Farmer
Setting and usage	The Expanse
Purpose	Constructed languages Artistic languages Fictional languages Belter Creole
Writing system	Latin script
Official status
Regulated by	Nick Farmer
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist List	none
Glottolog	None
IETF	none

Belter Creole, also simply known as Belter, is the constructed language developed by a lingust and polyglot Nick Farmer for The Expanse television series. In the universe, it was spoken by Belters, inhabitants of asteroid belt and 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 an 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 and Swedish, Slavic languages such as Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Japanese, Chinese, Persian, 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 concept of the language had appeared for the first time in the 2011 book Leviathan Wakes, published under the pen name James S. A. Corey, used by the collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Following that, Belter Creole had appeared in the next books from The Expanse 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. The vocabulary used in the books was chosen by authors on the basis of aesthetics and wasn't supposed to form a real language. As the language was later developed for The Expanse (TV series)The Expanse television series, novel writers had discouraged fans from learning their version of the language in favor of the television one.

Development

The concept of the language had appeared for the first time in the 2011 book Leviathan Wakes, published under the pen name James S. A. Corey, used by the collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Following that, Belter Creole had appeared in the next books from The Expanse 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. The vocabulary used in the books was chosen by authors on the basis of aesthetics and wasn't supposed to form a real language. As the language was later developed for The Expanse (TV series)The Expanse television series, novel writers had discouraged fans from learning their version of the language in favor of the television one.

Nick Farmer, a lingust 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 set around 200 years in the future, the language is used by Belters, the inhabitants of the asteroid belt and 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.

Developing the language, Fermer had modeled it as an 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 and Swedish, Slavic languages such as Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Japanese, Chinese, Persian, 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 the development, language's pronunciation had become too similar to Jamaican English. Due to that, Eric had suggested Farmer changes to give the language more global and multicultural characteristics. To achieve that, they mixed together elements from various accents and encouraged actors to use various accents, as well, as asked producers to cast actors with various accents.

The show producers had emphasized that they did not want to use subtitles for the Belter Creole, and wanted the audience to be able to still comprehend the dialogue. 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 3 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 3 variants of the scenes, after that, the producers would choose which version they wanted to use.

The language had appeared for the first time in "Dulcinea", the first episode of the first season of The Expanse, and since then has been regualrly apperaring in the show throughout its 5 seasons.

As the language gained popularity, Nick Farmer had started regularly reviling new words and grammar functions on its Twitter account. He also had given language lessons to the fans during meet-ups.

Phonology

Ortography and pronouciation

According to language creator, Nick Farmer, in the universe of The Expanse, there's no standardized orthography of the language, with various variants being used in different parts of the asteroid belt and the outer planets. Additionally, although so far all Farmer's posts, and language appearances in the TV series, included in being written in the Latin script, according to Farmer, Belter Creole could be written with various writing systems, such as Cyrillic, Greek, Devanagari, Katakana, Hebrew, Arabic, Hangul, etc.

Standard alphabet used by Nick Farmer to write down Belter Creole in TV series script and his Twitter posts include 23 letters of Latin script. The aforementioned letters are:

Nick Farmer's alphabet

Uppercase letters	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	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	i	k	l	m	n	o	p	r	s	t	u	v	w	x	y	z

Additionally, Farmer's script include 5 digraphs that are: Ch, Ng, Ny, Ow, and Sh, as well as one trigraph, which is Dzh. Letters C and H are present only in the digraph Ch and trigraph Dzh, while J and Q, are present only in the loanwords

Farmer also uses the Latin turned alpha letter (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, which means water, would be ɒkwa.

Pronouciation

Letter	Pronouciation	Belter example (translation)	English example	Notes	Source
A	/æ/	kuxaku (space, vacum)	cat (US)
B	/b/	beratna (brother)	aback
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
I	/i/	lit	machine
K	/k/	lek (leg, foot)	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)		Simlar to English canyon
O	/o/	ora (hour)	yawn
Ow	/ɒ/	owkwa (water)	not (RP) thought (US)
Ɒ		ɒkwa (water)		Rarer variant spelling
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)	touble
U	/u/	unte (and)	boot
V	/v/	livit (life)	very
W	/w/	wit	weep
X	/x/	xiya (here)	loch (Scottish)	Simlar to H in Enlish 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 pronouciation. Example of such are Á in ámolof (/'æmolof/) which means love, É in idzhifobék (/id͡ʒifo'bek/) which means weak, Ó in belówt (/be'lɒt/) which means blood, and Ú in gútegow (/'guttegɒ/) which means ready.

The tilde placed above the letters A and E is used to indicate the nasal vowel. Examples of such are à in shãsa which means chance and Ẽ in Kẽdzhi, Belter rendition of the name Kenji.

Letters with diacritics

Uppercase letters	Á	Ã	É	Ẽ	Ó	Ú
Lowercase letters	á	ã	é	ẽ	ó	ú

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 (/'ʃɒxæ/)
• seteshang (/se'teʃæŋ/)
• gufovedi (/gufo'vedi/)

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 (/'æmolof/)
• idzhifobék (/id͡ʒifo'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 (/'zakoŋ/) → zákomang (/'zako.mæŋ/)
• gut (/gut/) → gútegow (/'guttegɒ/)
• tung (/tuŋ/) → túngeting (/'tuŋetiŋ/)

Grammar

Nouns and adjectives

Nouns do not specify the quantity of the objects and do not have different versions for singular and plural versions. For example, mang can mean both a person and people. The quantity is instead determined by the presence of the quantifiers, numerals, or inferred from context. For example wang mang means one person and tu mang means two people. The plural can be in some worlds defined by the suffix -lowda, for example in the Beltalowda, meaning Belters. The exception are the pronouns, which have both singular and plural forms.

Nouns may be used attributively to modify other nouns, forming a compound noun. Unlike in English, where the modifier typically precedes the word being modified, in Belter the head noun goes first and the one modifying it follows afterward. For example, diye beref, which mean birthday, is formed from the words diye, meaning day, and beref, meaning birth.

Adjectives are placed after the nouns they modify, for example in: setara mali, which means little star.

Articles

Belter Creole has 2 articles, indefined wa, which coresponds to English a and an, and defined da, which coresponds to English the.

An indefinite article wa is used to mark an indefinite noun phrase. Indefinite articles are those, which do not refer to a specific identifiable entity. For example in the sentence: tenye wa diye beref gut, which means have a happy birthday.

A defined article da is used to mark an definite noun phrase. Definite articles are used to refer to a particular member of a group. For example in the sentence: kepelésh da imbobo kaka?, which means where is the barthroom?. When a noun is marked with da, any attributive nouns or adjectives applied to that noun must also be so marked with it. For example, in the sentence: da setara da mali, which means the little star. The definite article is also sometimes also used before a person's name, for example da Naomi for name Naomi.

Pronouns

The language has 2 sets of 3 pronouns, each having singular and plural forms. All pronouns in the Belter are gender-neutral. Plural pronouns are formed by adding the suffix -lowda to singular pronouns.

Pronouns

	Singular	Plural
1st	mi (I)	milowda (we)
2nd	to (you)	tolowda (you)
3rd	im (they)	imalowda, imim (they)

Tences and aspects

The language has 3 basic tenses which are the past, the present, and the future. Sentences without tense indicators are in the present tense. For example: mi showxa, which means I speak. The past tense is indicated by adding ta after the pronoun. For example: mi ta showxa, which means I spoke. The future tense is indicated by adding gonya after the pronoun. For example: mi gonya showxa, which means I will speak.

It also has 3 grammatical aspects, which are the continuous, the habitual, and the perfective. The continuous aspect specifies incomplete action or state in progress at a specific time. It is indicated by adding ando after the pronoun. For example: mi ando showxa, which means I am speaking. The habitual aspect specifies an action as occurring habitually. It is indicated by adding tili after the pronoun. For exampe: mi tili showxa, which means I regularly speak. The perfective aspect specifies an action viewed as a simple whole. It is indicated by adding finyish after the pronoun. For example, mi finyish showxa, which means I have/had spoken.

When indicators of both tense and aspect are present in the sentence, the tense indicator is put before the aspect's one. For example: mi ta ando showxa, which means, I was speaking.

Sentence structure

The sentence structure of Belter Creole is subject–verb–object, which means that the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. It also has the zero copula, the phenomenon where the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship. For example in the sentence: mi nadzhush, which means, I am tired, but in the literal translation would mean I tired.

Forming questions

The questions are formed by adding the word ke at the end of the statement sentence. For example, the sentence "To showxa lang Belta", which means You speak Belter Creole, after transforming it into the "To showxa lang Belta, ke?", will mean "Do you speak Belter Creole?".

When asking a question, on which both speakers agree, keyá, meaning isn't it, is used instead. For example, sentence "To showxa lang Belta, keyá?" means "You speak Belter Creole, don't you?".

The questions containing interrogatives do not require the addition of the word ke. Aforementioned words are:

• kemang = who
• kepelésh = where
• ketim = when
• keting = what
• kewe = how
• kéweting = what kind/type
• kéradzhang = why, for what reason
• kédawang = which
• kelowda = how many/much

An example of such sentence is "Kepelésh shapu to?" which means "Where's your hat?".

Vocabulary

Example words

Example words

Belter	English	Etymology
owkwa	water	Italian aqua, water; Spanish agua, water
ereluf	air	English air + German Luft, air
losh	light	Spanish luz, light; Italian luce, light
nalosh	dark	English no + Spanish luz, light; Italian luce, light
beratna	brother
sésata	sister
mang	person	English man
kopeng	friends	French copain, friend; Mandarin Chinese 朋友 (péngyou), friend
xante	hand	English hand
lek	leg, foot	English leg
gova	head	Polish głowa
sasa	to know	Spanish saber, to know
pensa	to think, to believe	Spanish pensar, to think
ámolof	love	Spanish amo, to love + English love
imbobo	hole, apartment, room	Zulu imbobo, hole
ya	yes	English yes, yeah; German ja, yes
na	no	English no
unte	and	German und, and
oye	hello	Spanish oye, hey
oyedeng	goodbye
taki taki	thank you	Swedish tack, thank you; Norwegian Takk; Danish tak, thanks; Mandarin Chinese 谢谢 (xièxiè), thank you

Numbers

Numbers from 0 to 10 in Belter

Number	Belter word	Number	Belter word	Number	Belter word
0	nada
1	wang	10	teng	100	xanya
2	tu	20	tuteng	200	túxanya
3	serí	30	seriteng	300	seríxanya
4	fu	40	futeng	400	fúxanya
5	faf	50	fáveteng	500	fávexanya
6	sikesh	60	síkeseteng	600	síkesexanya
7	seng	70	séngeteng	700	séngexanya
8	et	80	éteteng	800	étexanya
9	nang	90	nángeteng	900	nángexanya

Numbers with values in both tens and ones are formed by combining ones number with tens number, and joining them with affix -un-. For example:

• 18 = et-un-teng ("eight and ten")
• 81 = wang-un-éteteng ("one and eight tens")

When forming a number with hundreds place, the hundreds number is placed at the beginning of the number, then followed by the one and ten numbers format. For example:

• 281 = túxanya wang-un-éteteng ("two hundred one and eight tens")

When used attributively, numbers come before the noun they count, for example in the sentence serí buk, which means three books.

Novel language

The concept of the language had appeared for the first time in the 2011 book Leviathan Wakes, published under the pen name James S. A. Corey, used by the collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Following that, Belter Creole had appeared in the next books from The Expanse 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. The vocabulary used in the books was chosen by authors on the basis of aesthetics and wasn't supposed to form a real language. The languages used as a basis of the language vocabulary include: English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Estonian, Esperanto, French, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Arabic, Catalan, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, Turkish. Authors kept the original spellings of borrowed words or made a modified version of them. The language was inconsistent and on many occasions used different words for the same meaning. Foe example words laa and la from Arabic ليس (lays), na from English nah and ne from Serbo-Croatian ne/не, all meant no, while both gato from Japanese ありがとう (arigatō) and aituma from Estonian aitäh ment thank you.

. As the language was later developed for The Expanse (TV series)The Expanse television series, novel writers had discouraged fans from learning their version of the language in favor of the television one. Tough novel and television versions of the language are meant to not be related, some words from the novel version appear in the television version, for example word both novel sa-sa and television sasa mean to know.

Tu run spin, pow, Schlauch tu way acima and ido.
Go spinward to the tube station, which will take you back to the docks.

— Example of the Belter language and its translation in Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

Example text

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article I:

Belter Creole
Kowl mang fong beref ferí unte eka (in dignity and rights). Imalowda pensa unte sensa we gut unte we mal. Unte im mogut fo imalowda du fo sif asilik imalowda beratna unte sésata.

English
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.