Belter Creole

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Belter Creole
lang belta
Pronunciation[laŋg ˈbælta]
Created byNick Farmer
Date2014
SettingThe Expanse
Native toThe Belt
Creole
  • Belter Creole
SourcesRomance languages, Slavic languages, Germanic languages, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Zulu
Official status
Regulated byNick Farmer
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

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.

Phonology

Orthography

Although all of Belter Creole's appearances have been written in the Latin script, Farmer claims that the language can be written in other writing systems as well.

Alphabet

Nick Farmer's 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

Digraphs: t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ.

Vowels

Front Back
Close i u
Near-open æ
Open a ɒ

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.

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 Tu 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.

Other resources