Belter Creole
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| Belter Creole | |
|---|---|
| Belter | |
| lang belta | |
| Pronunciation | [laŋg ˈbælta] |
| Created by | Nick Farmer |
| Date | 2014 |
| Setting | The Expanse |
| Native to | The Belt |
| Sources | Romance languages, Slavic languages, Germanic languages, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Zulu |
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | Nick Farmer |
Belter Creole(lang belta), aka Belter is a constructed language created by Nick Farmer for The Expanse sci-fi book and TV series. It was made as an English creole, but its lexical base has features of Romance languages, Germanic languages and Slavic languages, as well as languages like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew and Zulu.
Belter has various accents and dialects due to the immense cultural diversity of the Belt's inhabitants. According to Nick Farmer himself, the dialect used in the TV show is the Ceres dialect.
Novel version
There is a distinction between the language made by Nick Farmer for the TV series and the language created by James S.A. Corey in the The Expanse novel series. In the novels, the language is presented as more of an English dialect "to give the reader a sense of being excluded from [the] culture". It has no developed phonology, morphology and syntax, and instead mixes vocabulary from various languages spoken on Earth, including English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Estonian, Esperanto, French, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Arabic, Catalan, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Russian and Turkish.
The novel language is also not internally consistent, for example the words la[1], na[2] and ne[3] all mean "no", while gato[4] and aituma[5] both mean "thank you".
Tu run spin, pow, Schlauch tu way acima and ido.
Go spinward to the tube station, which will take you back to the docks.
Phonology
Orthography
Although all of Belter Creole's appearances(both in and out of the series) have been written in the Latin script, Farmer claims that the language can be written in other writing systems as well.
Alphabet
| Majuscule | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | I | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minuscule | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | i | k | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
Consonants
| Labial | Labiodental | Dental/ alveolar |
Post- alveolar/ palatal |
Velar | Labial-velar | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | ||||||
| Fricative | s | z | f | v | ʃ | x | ||||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||||||||
| Lateral | l | |||||||||||
| Flap | ɾ | |||||||||||
Vowels
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | ||
| Near-open | æ | |||
| Open | a | ɒ | ||
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | ||||
| Near-open | æ̃ | |||
| Open | ã | |||
Prosody
Stress
In Belter, different than usual stress is indicated with an acute accent on a vowel, e.g. ámolof([ˈamolof]), meaning "love". Vowels that can appear with acute accents are ⟨á⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨ó⟩ and ⟨ú⟩, although in general stress is placed on the penultimate syllable of a word.
Phonotactics
Morphophonology
Morphology
See also: Belter Creole/Swadesh list.
Particles
There are two Belter particles: indefinite wa and definite da.
Pronouns
Personal pronouns
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First | mi | milowda |
| Second | to | tolowda |
| Third | im | imalowda/imim |
Syntax
In Belter, questions are formed by adding ke at the end of a statement, e.g. To showxa lang belta(You speak Belter) and To showxa lang belta, ke?(Do you speak Belter?). Additionally, keyá means "isn't it", so if one wanted to say "You speak Belter, right?" it would be To showxa lang belta, keyá?
Belter also uses the zero copula feature, e.g. mi nadzhush means "I am tired", although a literal translation would simply be "I tired".
Constituent order
Belter uses a SVO(subject-verb-object) sentence structure, e.g. To showxa lang belta(You speak Belter). In that sentence, To is the subject, showxa is the verb, and lang belta is the object.
Noun phrase
Verb phrase
Sentence phrase
Dependent clauses
Example texts
Article 1 of the UDHR in Belter Creole:
Kowl mang fong beref im im ferí unte eka [...]. Imalowda pensa unte sensa we gut unte we mal. Unte im mogut fo manting du wit sif asilik beratna unte sésata.
English translation:
All human beings are born free and equal [...]. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.