10 Things You Didn't Know About The Expanse

3. The Word

When designing the sound of the show, extra care was taken to make sure that the language felt just as real as the ship designs.

Belter Creole, or Lang Belter, was developed with thought to the natural evolution in language that occurs when people of a wide base of cultures live and work in close proximity.

The Belt was a melting pot for the most intrepid of humanity, a patchwork of peoples from all parts of the world and all walks of life, as it grew from isolated colonies and outposts to the emergent nation we see in the show. Like many patois languages, its core basis was supplemented by a mix of other linguistic influences.

In this case, a base of English was modified with elements of Germanic, Chinese, Slavic, Latin, Indic and Niger-Congo languages, giving us the wonderfully rough and contrasting Belter language we're treated to.

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My passion for all things Sci Fi goes back to my earliest days, when old VHS copies of Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet gripped my tiny mind with their big, noisy vehicles and terrifying puppets. I'd like to say my taste got more refined over the years, but between the Warhammer, Space Dandy and niche Star Wars EU books, perhaps it just got broader. I've enjoyed games of all calibre since I figured out that dice weren't just for eating, and have written prose ever since I was left unsupervised with some crayons next to a white wall. I got away with it by calling it "schoolwork" for as long as I could, and university helped me keep the charade going a while longer. Since my work began to get published, it's made all those long hours repainting the walls seem worth it.