Nick Farmer is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

writer and linguist based in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. He is a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...

able to speak in 14 languages. He had created 3

constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction ...

s for

television series:

Belter Creole Belter Creole, also simply known as Belter, is a constructed language developed by the linguist and polyglot Nick Farmer for '' The Expanse'' television series. In the universe, it was spoken by Belters, inhabitants of the asteroid belt and o ...

for '' The Expanse'', and Trill and Barzan for '' Star Trek: Discovery''.

History

Youth and education

Nick Farmer was inspired to become a linguist by his godfather,

Kenneth L. Hale Kenneth Locke Hale (August 15, 1934 – October 8, 2001), also known as Ken Hale, was an American linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied a huge variety of previously unstudied and often endangered languages—especially ...

, and his mother, respectively a linguistics teacher at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

and his student. As a child, he moved a couple of times, getting to grow up with a few different languages and dialects in his surroundings, eventually making him interested in linguistics. He studied linguistics at the

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and wa ...

and

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Fran ...

in Berkeley. He also become a

able to speak in 14 languages.

Constructed languages

Around 2010, while in a bar, he met George R. R. Martin, the author of the ''

A Song of Ice and Fire ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' is a series of epic fantasy novels by the American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. He began the first volume of the series, '' A Game of Thrones'', in 1991, and it was published in 1996. Martin, who in ...

'' novel series, who then introduced him to Ty Franck, co-author of '' The Expanse'' novel series. Around 2014 and 2015, during the production of the first season of '' The Expanse'' television series, Farmer was commissioned to develop

, the constructed language of one of the factions in the series. Franck was the one who suggested hiring Farmer. Inside the universe of television series set around 200 years in the future, the language is used by Belters, the inhabitants of the

asteroid belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

and outer planets of the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

. The language had developed during the colonization of the Asteroid Belt, firstly starting as the

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

spoken by people who came to the colonies from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surf ...

speaking in various languages from all around the world. With next generations, the language had developed into the creole. Developing the language, Farmer had modeled it as a creole based on English, with influence of other languages from all around the world, including

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

such as

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, Portuguese and Italian,

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...

such as

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto ...

such as

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

, Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Japanese, Chinese, Persian,

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, Zulu and others. As the result of his work, Farmer had created over 1000 words for his language, adding more to the list if requested by the show's producers and fans. In 2020, Farmer was commissioned to develop two constructed languages, Trill and Barzan, for the '' Star Trek: Discovery'' television series. The languages had appeared in the 2 episodes of the third season of the show.

Works

Novels

*''The Survivors: A Novella'' (2017)

Short stories

*''The Venusian'' (2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Farmer, Nick American science fiction writers 20th-century American short story writers American male short story writers American male novelists 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American male writers Constructed language creators Writers from California Novelists from California People from Oakland, California Multilingual writers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)