Yáterash, náterash, & sepíng: the Belter vocabulary of gravity

(NOTE: Words in lang belta (Belter) are pronounced with stress on the penultimate syllable. An accent on a vowel indicates that stress falls on that syllable in a particular word.)

Oye, kopeng!

One of the characteristic experiences of da livit da belta(Belter life) is birth and childhood in low- and zero-G. It affects Belter physiology, to the point that they can’t stand up or breathe properly at Earth’s gravity (1G). They require steroids and growth hormones to develop properly, even by Belter standards. It’s made clear that the more prejudiced among inner planet folk believe that “Belters aren’t even human anymore.” This is why one of the Belter slogans is Milowda na anyimal!, “We are not animals”. (Note: Belter does not add an -s to indicate plural; it’s implied by context, in this case milowda, “we, us”. Mi na anyimal is “I am not an animal”.)



Inner planet folk talk about “gravity” because it is a constant force all their lives. Most Earthers never get even as far as Luna, so zero-G is a purely theoretical concept for them. The culture’s largely unchanging experience of gravity is reflected in that there is one word for it.

In the Belt, gravity comes with an on/off switch as well as a volume knob. Shipboard experience of gravity varies from floating in zero-G to G forces strong enough to kill the crew, depending on how hard the drive is burning. Different space stations will have different gravities depending on how big they are and how fast they are spinning. None will be at a full G.

The multiple words Belters use to describe their cultural experience of gravity reflects this lived reality.

One way to mimic gravity is through rotation; on a rotating space station “down” is the direction of the centripetal force. The word for this kind of gravity is sepíng, “spin".

One artifact of spin gravity is the Coriolis effect. Close to the core, the station is spinning so quickly in such a tight arc that if you drop something, although it’s pulled in straight line towards the floor, by the time it hits the floor the floor (and the room above it) has moved; rather than fall straight down, it will look like it’s falling in a spiraling curve. The further away from the core, the longer the arc of travel, and the less Coriolis one experiences.

Watch Miller pour liquids. In the governor’s office, he pours water into a glass and it falls in a straight line. That means they’re pretty close to the outside skin of Ceres, because there is no visible distortion to the water stream. When Miller is going through Julie’s dating profile to find the data-broker, he pours a brown spirit off to the side of the cup, and it pours in an arced stream, implying that he’s someplace towards the core where the Coriolis is much stronger.

Similarly, when he’s interviewing Gia the prostitute after her client gets murdered, he shares a glass of something, probably with the excuse of helping her calm her nerves. We don’t see Gia drink, but when it cuts back to Miller, rather than “raise a glass” in a toast, he swings the cup in front of him in a flat circle before taking a sip. The Rosse Buurt district is coreward, and maybe that’s a Belter way of toasting the other person while close to the core without flinging the drink out of the glass.

Another example of sepíng is when Naomi is guiding everyone through the Eros service tunnels. At one point, she drops a pinch of dust in front of her and looks at how it corkscrews to the floor. That gives her an orientation and lets her know what direction she wants to go. (GIF via @CarlBrwn)



The other way Humanity mimics gravity in space is linear acceleration. The Epstein drive is hyper efficient, doesn’t require the ejection of reaction mass, and can accelerate a ship far faster than a human could ever tolerate, drugs or no. Epstein drive ships in The Expanse are built like a skyscraper, floors stacked on top of each others, with the engine in the basement. As long as the ship is actively accelerating nose first or decelerating engines first, the crew experience gravity.



A point-to-point trip would involve accelerating to half-way, cutting the drive, “flipping” the ship using “teakettle” thrusters (water-ejecting maneuvering thrusters). Once the ship is repositioned and flying engines-first, one fires up the drive again and decelerates towards the final destination.

The nouns for the on/off state of ship-based gravity in Belter experience are yáterash (“under thrust”) [literally “yes thrust”] and náterash (“thrusters are off”) [literally “no thrust”].

The belter word for “to jump” is du push. Because in zero-G, that’s essentially what a jump is. And if you think it through, belters probably think of jumping with their hands. Jump in terms of a leap is salta.



Kaka felota means “floating shit”. It’s what happens when the toilet backs up during náterash, and is also used where an Earther might say “bullshit”, and probably how they express general displeasure. We don’t know if Nick has given us the straight up verb “to float” (or if he has, we haven’t captured it in the tékidoc yet), but it’ll probably end up being similar to felota.

No doubt there are other gravity-related words regarding navigation. Owbit is the Belter word for “orbit”. We know “slingshot club” is an extreme sport among Belters, but we don’t have the Belter for it yet. So keep your eyes peeled for more physics vocab. As always, Nick Farmer is the final arbiter of all things lang belta. Follow his twitter if you haven’t already.



Du féri da Belte!

Da Pirata & Da Lexica

EDIT 3/11/2018:

Nick Farmer wrote a Belter poem, which contains the line:

Imim mebi du mi unte du to fong materi, / Amash bera tenye terásh xiya ere da nax ”You and I may have been made from matter, / But we only have thrust here in the night”



In the twitter-thread, Nick elaborates:

[Térash] literally means thrust, poetically can be broader, like power. The way to think about that couplet is that we are made of matter, matter, has mass, mass has gravitational force, but in the Belt, gravity as we think of it is insignificant. And you can think of gravity as drawing things together… like how people want to be together.

But in the Belt, we don’t have that. Only thrust, which is artificial. But at the same time it’s something that WE produce actively, not passively. So, to be together, as we were meant to be as material beings, we have to do work when surrounded by this vast emptiness.



