Belter Creole grammar

This article is a stub. You can help The Expanse Wiki by expanding it.

This page deals with the grammar of Belter Creole, aka lang Belta.

Typologically, Belter is an analytic language. Rather than inflections, it primarily uses separate words to build grammatical constructions, such as prepositions and auxiliary verbs, and the meaning of a sentence depends strongly on word order. However, it does use compounding and some suffixes for deriving new words. For example, the -lowda suffix is used to form plural pronouns (see below).

Nouns

Plurals

Generally, nouns are not inflected for number; a singular noun has the same form as a plural one. For example, maliwala can mean either "child" or "children", depending on context. Plurality is determined in other ways: the presence of quantifiers, numerals, or simply inferred from context.^[1] The exception is pronouns, which do have distinct plural forms (see Pronouns below).

Compounds

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 lang Belta the head noun goes first and the one modifying it follows afterwards:

diye	beref
day	att.birth
birthday

bap	kuxaku
door	att.vacuum
airlock

Articles

The definite article is da:^[2]

mi	du	mowteng	fo	da	dzhush
1sg	do	need	for	def	juice
I need the juice.^[3]

Definite articles are used before a person's name in some cases, e.g. da Mila for "Miller".

Belter displays definiteness agreement, similar to that found in Greek or Hebrew. That is, when a noun is marked with da, any attributive nouns or adjectives applied to that noun must also be so marked:^[4]

livit Belta "Belter life" → da livit da Belta "the Belter life"

setara mali "little star" → da setara da mali "the little star"

The indefinite article is wa:

tenye	wa	diye	beref	gut
have	ndef	day	birth	good
Have a happy birthday!^[5]

Quantifiers

walowda

wamali

Derivation

mang

ting

wala

Pro-forms

This is a (possibly incomplete) chart of pronouns, pro-adverbs and determiners, arranged in a convenient table-of-correlatives format.

	de that	ke which, what	kowl all, every	na no
mang person	demang that person	kemang who?	kowmang everyone	namang nobody
pelésh place	depelésh there	kepelésh where?	kowpelésh everywhere	*napelésh nowhere
tim time	detim then	ketim when?	kowltim always	natim never
ting thing	deting that thing	keting what?	kowlting everything	nating nothing
we way, means	dewe that way	kewe how?	*kowlwe every way	nawe no way

Pronouns

	singular	plural
1st	mi	milowda
2nd	to	tolowda
3rd	im	imalowda, imim

sif

beltalowda

inyalowda

Adjectives

Adjectives are placed after the nouns they modify:

kapawu fash "fast ship"

setara mali "little star"

Adverbs

Prepositions

ere

fo

fong

wit / nawit

Conjunctions

unte

o

amash

Verbs

Tense

ta

gonya

Aspect

ando

finyish

tili

Mood

mebi

fosho

mogut fo

mowsh

deng fo

Serial verbs

Light verbs

du

Negation

na

Numbers

Below are the words for basic numbers.^[6]

number	word	combining form
0	nada
1	wang
2	tu
3	serí
4	fu
5	faf	fáve-
6	sikesh	síkese-
7	seng	sénge-
8	et	éte-
9	nang	nánge-
10	teng
100	xanya

Multiples of 10 or 100 are formed by appending teng or xanya to the combining form of the multiplier, with the stress remaining on the multiplier:

number	word	number	word
10	teng	100	xanya
20	tuteng	200	túxanya
30	seriteng	300	seríxanya
40	futeng	400	fúxanya
50	fáveteng	500	fávexanya
60	síkeseteng	600	síkesexanya
70	séngeteng	700	séngexanya
80	éteteng	800	étexanya
90	nángeteng	900	nángexanya

Numbers with values in both the ones and tens place are composed in little-endian order, joined by un:

18 = et-un-teng ("eight and ten")

81 = wang-un-éteteng ("one and eight tens")

If there is a hundreds place, it comes before the ones-and-tens place terms:^[7]

246 = túxanya sikesh-un-futeng

When used attributively, numbers come before the noun they count, as in English.^[8]

serí buk – three books

Sentence structure

Word order

SVO

Zero copula

mi		nadzhush
1sg	∅	tired
I'm tired.

Forming questions

Any sentence can be turned into a yes–no question by ending it with the interrogative particle ke:

To showxa lang Belta.	—	You speak Belter.
To showxa lang Belta ke?	—	Do you speak Belter?

The related tag question keyá also makes a sentence into a yes–no question, but one which expects agreement:

Da Rosi im kapawu fash, keyá?

The Roci is a fast ship, isn't it?

Sentences containing the ke-based interrogative words kemang, kepelésh, ketim, keting, or kewe do not need the trailing ke.

Kepelésh shapu to, Mila?

Where's your hat, Miller?