#langbelta

When the authors talk about "Belter Creole", what are do they mean? What is a "creole language" and why is it particularly appropriate that by the time of the The Expanse, a creole has settled as the stable lingua franca of The Belt?

Unpacking Creole Languages: a 4-part series

Creoles and their speakers have a history colonialism, racism, and exploitation, and the scholarship around them until quite recently has reflected this experience. And because they are considered somehow inherently deficient, attempts to educate children who are native speakers of a creole language in their native language are considered ill-advised, impossible, and can face outright resistance.

Ty Franck has mentioned being inspired by Sabir, a pidgen used for hundreds of years in the Mediterranean by sailors and traders, when he envisioned the "Belter Creole" for the books. The Belter Creole from the books is more of word salad used for flavoring, not an actual languauge. This is because Ty & Daniel are storytellers, not linguists.

So when the show hired linguist Nick Farmer to create a "Belter Creole" for the series... he went deep. The result is Lang Belta, an English-based creole with 30+ other languages contributing.

Creoles are not broken/degenerate versions of their mother languages, primal expressions of the language instinct, or pidgens which children have imposed syntax on.

Creoles are the human language process happening. It happens in a bit of a pressure cooker because of comparative isolation mixed with heavy language contact. But they are not some exotic things somehow essentially unlike the languages spoken by those in power.

On Ceres, the subway car announcements I've heard have been in English or Hindi. Never in lang belta. Why? Because Ceres is there for the benefit of the inners. Milowda na anyimal means "We are not animals". Only people being treated as animals develop catchphrases like that.

Understanding how the Belter language relates to the past and present of creole languages' experience of power dynamics, racism, and exploitation gives us a lot of insight into the experience of Beltalowda as a projected future of humans exploiting humans.

And if "Unpacking" whet your appetite for more about creoles, I'd recommend "Creole Exceptionalism and the (Mis)Education of the Creole Speaker" by Michel DeGraff of MIT. The article goes into more detail academically while still being accessible reading. There's also a good bit of Kreyol/French comparison as exemplar of the relationship between daughter and mother languages, which is enlightening for student of lang belta. Pwof. Michel Degraff helped Nick understand creoles so that he could go on and create one for the show.

Du feri da Belte! Wang ámolof, wang manting!

Oye, xunyamwala!

This is going to serve as a go-to link to pull together links to the various lang belta learning resources I recommend to people. It'll be updated as new resources become available.

Entry Level:

The Lang Belta Memrise Course. Where everyone should begin their studies. Learn your essential phrases and vocabulary here. By the folks who brought you The Expanse Cocktails.

Lang Belta Cheat Sheet by @ItReachesOut. Original debut: Worldcon 75

Da Tékidok Da Lang Da Belta Da Lexica ("Lexica's Belter Vocabulary Spreadsheet"). This is as close to a dictionary as we currently have. Everything is sourced either to something Nick Farmer has tweeted, or confirmed via his Patreon. NOTE: the sheet “Eyepatch & Cork” is valid LB entries that Pirate made that still needs Lexica to go over it and verify the formatting. before moving to the main “Words” sheet. Yes; that is a “Dirty Rotten Shoundrels” reference.

Moving Beyond the Basics:

BELTER GRAMMAR: Tense & Aspect. Tense is about place in time (past, presesnt, future). Aspect is about relation to the low of time (ongoing, habitual, or completed actions).

BELTER GRAMMAR: Mood. Mood describes the speaker's attitude towards what they are saying. Ideas like "must", "should" "would", etc.

BELTER GRAMMAR: This, That, & Which; Interrogatives, Relatives, etc English is very casual about how one deplys words like "this", "that", "which", "who", etc. Belter is much more specific in how one says things. The interrogative such as "which(?)" are not only different from the relative "which…", there can be different words depending on number and proximity, as well as what the subject is (thing, person, time, place…)

BELTER GRAMMAR: Of Being, and Being Of: Copulas, POssessives, and Genitives (NEW 4/2020)

Written Belter: An Alternative Orthography: Why does Pirate often write the digraph "ow" as "ɒ"?

Fo finyish vedi ɒta xunyamwala (“To find other students of lang belta”):

r/LangBelta

Sharing with the Class: Questions and answers to/from Nick Farmer’s Patreon.

The Expanse Discord: Lang Belta channel

The Paine x MacTane Lang Belta Class Convention Scedule (COMING SOON): Introduction To Lang Belta taught by some of the earliest students.

Lang Belta as a Creole Conlang

Unpacking Creole Languages: a 4-part series.

Creole Exceptionalism and the Mis-Education of the Creole Speaker:

Pwof. Michel DeGraff is an MIT Linguistics Professor and creolist who helped Nick Farmer get his head wrapped around creole languages so that he could create a creole conlang.

“Unpacking” heavily cites DeGraff, and is very much an introduction to his (and related sxholars’) ideas around creole linguistics and sociology. “Mis-Education” is by DeGraff and while it’s not obtuse, but it is dense. But Pirate & Lexica Have found the comparisons of Kreyol and French very illuminating when thinking about how Belter works.

These two articles above are for people who want to know more about creole languages and the history of racism/colonialism around them, as well as get an idea of what Nick was going for when he designed lang belta.

More about Belter:

Ars Technica interviews the Creater of Belter Creole from “The Expanse”

Deciper Sci-Fi Podcast ep. 46: Language & The Expanse (w/ guest host Nick Farmer)

Nick Farmer (Lang Belta) & David J Peterson (Dothraki, Valyrian, Trigedasleng) in conversation: “The Art Of Language Invention”. Stay all the way to the end of the Q&A. Yes, Pirate manipulated his place in line so he was last Q. Yes, Pirate’s Belter was once that jankety. So keep practicing!

Nick Farmer on Geek News Radio (NEW JAN 2020)

Q&A With Nick Farmer (NEW JAN 2020)

A Silicon Valley Linguist (NEW JAN 2020)

The Belter Bartender Playlist: videos in & about Lang Belta

Oye, xunyamwala!

The title of this article means “How do I feel about what I am saying?” because we’re going to discuss grammatical mood in Lang Belta.

And that’s what mood does, it describes the speaker’s attitude regarding what they are saying. This includes describing sentiments like “must”, “should”, “ought to”, “would”, “possibly”, “counterfactually” and others.

Previously we’ve discussed tense and aspect in detail as part of Tense-Aspect-Mood Grammar, and how Lang Belta has markers for each.

To briefly recap using showxa:

Unmarked verbs are present tense. Mi showxa. “I speak.”

Ta is the past tense marker. Mi ta showxa. “I spoke.”

Gonya is the future tense marker. Mi gonya showxa. “I will speak.”

Ando is the continuous aspect marker. Mi ando showxa. “I am speaking.”

Tili is the habitual aspect marker. Mi tili showxa. “I regularly speak.”

Finyish is the perfective aspect marker. Mi finyish showxa. “I have spoken/I had spoken.” (contextual)

Grammar in Belter is strictly subject-verb-object, and there is no passive construction; one uses the indefinite 3rd person plural imim as subject instead. “They/It” (unspecified) did/said it.

ENGLISH: “Sins were comitted”.

BELTER: Imim ta du papeka. (“They committed sins.”)

ENGLISH: “Things happened.”

BELTER: Imim ta du ting. (“It did things”)

Sentences in Lang Belta can have 1 tense (place in time) and 1 aspect (relationship to the flow of time), but multiple moods.

So, mood markers.

English uses modal verbs for words like “can” and “should”. Unlike in English, Belter mood markers are not verbs themselves, but auxiliary modifiers to a verb, just like tense and aspect markers. There still needs to be a verb for the mood marker to modify, (even if it’s the silent copula.

As far as the way mood markers in Belter behave, Nick gave the following answer regarding the mood marker fosho to a question on his Patreon:

“fosho always denotes the speaker’s belief, and modifies a verb, but it can move to emphasise the word after fosho”.

This is, I believe, an important indicator how how mood markers work in general in LB. The balance of this article will assume that this is the case (unless/until corrected by Nick).

The mood markers that Nick has mentioned publicly are:

Fosho (belief): Mi fosho ta vedi im. “I saw it (and I believe that I am right).” Fosho mi ta vedi im. “I (and not someone else) saw it.”

Fosho fosho (confidently held belief): Mi fosho fosho ta vedi im. “I saw it (and I have no doubts whatsoever).” Fosho Fosho mi ta vedi im. = “I absolutely was the one who saw it.”

NOTE: Mi pensa is both “I think” as well as “I believe”. Mi ando pensa ere is “I am thinking about”, which is how Belter describes having thoughts, contemplation.

Mogut fo (should, ought to): Mi mogut fo showxa. “I should speak.” Mogut fo mi fo showxa. “I (rather than someone else) should speak.”

Mowsh (must, have to): To mowsh showxa. “You must speak (rather than keep silent).” Mowsh to showxa. “You (rather than somebody else) must speak.“

Deng fo (would): Mi deng fo showxa, amash mi nasunte. “I would speak, but I am unwell.”

Kang (capability): Mi kang showxa. “I can speak".

Mebi (subjunctive):

To quote Nick again:

“Let’s just say that if you ever studied a Romance language and the subjunctive tripped you up, mood in #LangBelta might be a challenge”

Nick goes on in that twitter thread to give several examples of using mebi in a sentence that seem a bit confusing. But if we understand what the subjunctive mood does, and combine that with understanding of how mood markers move around a sentence explained above, how the sentences work in Belter become much clearer.

The subjunctive is an “irrealis mood”; it describes that things that are, in some sense, “unreal”; things which have not happened, things which might yet happen, counterfactuals, conditionals, things other than which the speaker knows to be “real”.

NOTE: while mebi has an etymological root in the English word “maybe”, they are not the same and mebi is used differently.

Let’s look at the examples Nick gave. In each of the following sentences, mebi

A: modifies the verb showxa (“to say”) and

B: moves around so that the word(s) following mebi are “subjunctive”, i.e. “irrealis”.

Im showxa ‘ya’”. “He says ‘yes’”

Im kang showxa ‘ya’”. “He can say ‘yes’” (is capable of)

Im mebi showxa “ya”. “He might say ‘yes’ (it is possible)”

Im mebi kang showxa “ya”. “He might be capable of saying ‘yes’”

Im mebi mebi showxa ‘ya’”. It’s possible (though unlikely) that he says ‘yes’”.

Fairly straightforward, right? But it can be subtle.

Mi pensa im ta showxa “ya” = I think he said “yes”

Mi pensa im mebi ta showxa “ya” = I think he said “yes” (but I’m not certain)

Mi pensa im ta showxa mebi “ya” = I think he said yes (but maybe he said something else)

Mi pensa mebi im ta showxa “ya” = I think it was him who said yes (but maybe it was someone else)

One thing I’ve noted is that Nick has never tweeted a sentence with the word sili (“if”) without also using mebi. Which leads me to suspect that “if” statements in lang belta might necessarily be subjunctive:

Sili im mebi kom, deng showxa mi = If he comes, then tell me. (Here the if/when he’s coming is the “irrealis” as it may it may not come to pass.)

Mi du mowteng du walowda walowda fosh wowk sili mi mebi gonya du wang wit da OPA, “I must do a lot of practice if I am possibly going to join the OPA.”

Ere Sirish na desh zakong, bera zakomang. To na sasa natim sili imim mebi kom fo leta-go to fongi fode, “On Ceres there are no laws, only cops. You don’t never know if someone will possibly come to take you away.”

Mi Fosho Fosho du mowteng vedi S4! Mi mebi gonya decho sili mi mebi na vedi im ematim! Oso, mogut fo to du wang wit milowda ere da channel da Discord da Expanse.

In this video, linguists Nick Farmer (creator of lang belta) and David J. Peterson (creator of Trigadasleng [The 100], Dothraki, & Valyrian [Game of Thrones]) in conversation about language, constructed langauges, television, and stuff.

At ~43:25, in response to a question regarding a surprising experience in the real world with their languages, Nick responds “When I go into a bar, and the bartender starts speaking to me in Belter, and I have this realization that there’s somebody who speaks my language way better than I do.”

Heh. To any extent that’s true, it’s probably bc I don’t have to sort through 30 languages rattling around in my noggin to get to the Belter. ;-)

At 1:06:50, I actually get to ask a couple of questions in Belter, and give a brief recruiting speech for the OPA. Yes, I start off by saying goodbye, and it’s really jankety “Beltlish”. But practice makes perfect.

Du ferí da Belte!

Because I can't ever make things easy for myself, I've started running a second RPG campaign.

It's a sci-fi game this time, using The Expanse RPG rules and in that setting (albeit without any connection to the TV show or books), so it's a nice change of pace on the front&emdash;and it makes it harder to reuse any of the plot beats or influences from my 13th Age campaign, which is slso useful because it's for three of the same party members.

One of my favourite things in The Expanse is langbelta, the creole spoken by the inhabitants of The Belt and the Outer Planets. While the novels have just used a slap-dash approach of mixing words from various languages, the TV show hired a lingust to create an actual creole, with syntactical and grammatical rules governing it.

And because, as mentioned above, I can't ever make things easy for myself, I decided to learn how to speak it to give my in-game Belter characters a bit more flavour.

When I was studying French for A-Level, I found myself thinking in French during classes because that was easier for my brain than the two-step process of thinking of a thing in English and having to search for the words in French. I'm doing this again now with a constructed language designed for a science fiction TV show, and it's fun.

I'm noticing myself translating my thoughts, random sentences that other people say, TV dialogue, books… almost everything I'm encountering gets an internal langbelta pass.

Which is how I ended up translating the lyrics to The House of the Rising Sun into langbelta. I had to use English words for a couple of things that don't have official translations, as well as coin a couple of new compound words, and singing along take a little creativity, but it is more-or-less possible.

Da Imbombo da Sowng da Leva

Desh imbobo ere NEW ORLEANS Imim du nem da Sowng da Leva Im finyish du suchok fo walowda walowda beratna Unte Got, mi fosho wang

Matna mi ta básengwala Im ta xalte gut da JEANS da belú da nuva mi Papa mi ta kasínyowala Ere NEW ORLEANS

Da ting kasínyowala du mowteng Im bera kaxa ere kapawu Unte detim im xush im bera Detim im ando beve

Matna showxa málimang tolowda Fo na du lik mi finyish du Na du livit wit papeka unte terístiting Ere da Imbobo da Sowng da Leva

Tenye wang lek ere da seteshang Da owta ere kapawu Mi ando go bek fo NEW ORLEANS Fo leta-go mi fongi fode

Desh imbobo ere NEW ORLEANS Imim du nem da Sowng da Leva Im finyish du suchok fo walowda walowda beratna Unte Got, mi fosho wang

Or, back to English...

The Hole the Sun the Raise

There-exists (a) hole in/on NEW ORLEANS (Non-specific) They make name the Sun the raise It (perfect aspect) makes problems for many many brothers And God, I (certain-opinion) (am) one

My mother (past) (is) (a) clothes-person She (past) keep good the JEANS the blue the new mine My father (past) (is) (a) casino-person In/on NEW ORLEANS

The thing casino-person has need (for) It (is) just (a) box in/on (a) ship And that-time-when he happy is only That-time-when he (is) (contibnuous aspect) drink

Mother(s) speak small-person(s) all-yours To not do like I (perfect aspect) do Not to live with sin and sad-things In the Hole the Sun the Raise

Have one leg in/on the station The other in/on (a) ship I (continuing aspect) go back to NEW ORLEANS To take-away me from-here to-there1

There-exists (a) hole in/on NEW ORLEANS (Non-specific) They make name the Sun the raise It (perfect aspect) makes problems for many many brothers And God, I (certain-opinion) (am) one

Oye, xúnyamwala! With upwards of 30 languages contributing to its evolution, one neat factor about Belter is that there is no official orthography, and it can be written in almost any alphabet. The show uses the Roman alphabet for the most part.

Here’s a Twitter thread from Nick Farmer (creator of lang belta):

“Belter doesn't have a standard orthography. It's reasonable to assume that in different parts of the Belt, it is written in the script most familiar to those speakers. Many Belters are trilingual+. Belter, English, and whatever their grandparents spoke. So, you could write Belter in the Roman alphabet, or Cyrillic, Greek, Devanagari, Katakana, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, Hangul, Cherokee, whatever you'd like.”

“But while language is a natural and spontaneous product of human interaction, writing systems are not. They are consciously developed and purposely spread through education, and there's no practical reason to mix them, while there are several reasons not to. That said, there are always exceptions (looking at you, Japanese) and there ARE cases of individual symbols being created or adapted in a writing system when used with a new language, for sounds that didn't exist in the original language.”

“But Belter phonology, like the phonologies of many creoles, is relatively simple and regular compared to many other languages. Creoles tend to what the languages coming into contact have in common, abandoning the more unusual features. So, not much need for unusual symbols.”

“The only sound that can't be represented by the Roman alphabet with one character is the vowel "ow." On Twitter I've used the digraph, but sometimes on the show you'll see the symbol "ɒ," borrowed from the international phonetic alphabet.”

Recently @Melanyabelta pointed out some other characters one can use to spice up written Belter, reduce digraphs, and still stay pretty readable without having to learn an entire new alphabet.

The first two characters below are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which the show already uses. The other three are consonants with an accent called a “háček”, and replaces the “h” in sh, ch, and dzh. This accent shows up in modern Baltic alphabets like Slovene & Gajica, which are themselves elaborations on the Roman alphabet better suited to the particular language being written.

ow: ɒ ng: ŋ (“n” + the tail from “g”) sh: š ch: č dzh: dž

Note: Belter is pronounced with the stress on the penultimate syllable. Accents over a vowel indicate stress on a different syllable. Here’s what Belter looks like written this way:

Kéradžaŋ na deš namaŋ ere da imbobo da rɒm? Kepeléš kɒl kopeŋ mi imalɒda ta go?  

Kemaŋ ta leta-go šetéxetiŋ mi? Du mɒteŋ da tiŋ de fo wɒk.  

Tenye wa češ gut!  

Detiŋ to kaŋ du fo du mi xuš im pašaŋ foŋ.  

Pašaŋ to, džemaŋ nakaŋipensa! To kɒltim ando du ručirɒnya. Setóp da kaka de!  

Da šeŋ im da kori da kapawu xiya im mebi na séfesɒŋ. Amaš milɒda finyiš du šeru so… šukumi. Sili mebi milɒda na dečo fore detim milɒda kom-go ere Siriš, FOSHO FOSHO gonya du im gut.  

Imim ando du wɒk milɒda asilik tɒču; xídawaŋ na kaŋ xalte legawu!  

Na deš zakoŋ ere Siriš, bera zákomaŋ.

♬Da maliwala da beratna mi im voyu ere Siriš; im xalte wit ubiča, im keŋ da we da šetexetiŋ.♬

Bosmaŋ OPA ere Palaš unte Iapetus imalɒda ta ékepeš xop detiŋ imim kaŋ avita da wɒ, unte da OPA ofiša na ere pati ere da kombat.

Ye páxari ere Siriš šɒxa da OPA mebi gonya gif xep fo da pati im mebi gonya du loš ere da wɒ, nalik da pólisi da tadisoŋ fo condenašaŋ eka.

One reason I really like this orthography is (as Nick has pointed out in conversation) SF/F authors are notorious for being haphazard and casual with diacritical marks and accents when naming characters o]r writing in a conlang for their story. Many do it seemingly at random, for decorative purposes and without thought as to what pronunciations the diacriticals are supposed to be representing.

This set of characters is really close already to how modern Slavic languages are spelled, and it’s pronounced as it’s written without ambiguity. Belters have better things for the children to do than memorize archaic etymologies for spelling bees.

As Nick has mentioned above, spoken languages processes are natural and evolutionary, but writing systems are chosen. It was mentioned on r/TheExpanse that one could introduce Cyrillic characters to reduce digraphs, but that would mean choosing to mix Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. As Nick said, there are practical reasons not to mix writing systems.

And bonus points: The Expanse escape room had Belter graffiti that used alternate spellings that were not chosen for use on the show, but which I take to mean some Belters somewhere spell sefoka as s’foka and belowt as b’lowt.

And I dig that a lot.