Belter Creole

Belter Creole, often referred to simply as "Belter", is the cultural language spoken by many Belters. The Belter name for the language itself is Lang Belta. As its English name suggests, Belter Creole is a creole language. During humanity's expansion into the solar system, people from many different parts of Earth or Mars often lived and worked together, and they developed a pidgin language to communicate with one another. Over time this developed into a full-fledged creole language, lang Belta, which became the lingua franca, a common tongue, of the Belt and the outer planets.
As a creole language, Lang Belta is primarily derived from English, with influences and contributions from languages of many different families, such as Germanic, Chinese, Romance, Indic, Slavic, and Niger-Congo. Many of its words were derived from words or phrases in one or more of these languages.

Gestures

Though not part of the language per se, spoken Belter language is accompanied by several physical idioms, which originally developed due to the need to be able to communicate while wearing space suits. Some examples:

• Lifting the hand: Asking a question
• Lifting a fist: Greeting; nodding, affirmative
• Shrugging is done with one or both hands, palm-up
• Two fingers (index and middle) double touch the opposite side of the chest: thank you
• Nail of index finger touching the thumb's inner side between the 2 digits, forming a circle, while the other 3 fingers are straight: derogatory gesture, similar to giving the middle finger Crossing arms overhead: danger