Nick Farmer is an American science fiction writer and linguist based in

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

, California, United States. He is a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

able to speak in 14 languages. He has created 3

constructed language A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...

s for science fiction television series:

Belter Creole Belter Creole, also simply known as Belter (Belter Creole: ), 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 as ...

for ''

The Expanse Expanse or The Expanse may refer to: Media and entertainment ''The Expanse'' franchise * ''The Expanse'' (novel series), a series of science fiction novels by James S. A. Corey * ''The Expanse'' (TV series), a television adaptation of the ...

'', and

Trill TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is a networking protocol for optimizing bandwidth and resilience in Ethernet networks, implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and ...

and Barzan for '' Star Trek: Discovery''.

Youth and education

Nick Farmer was inspired to become a linguist by his godfather, Kenneth L. Hale, and his mother, respectively a linguistics teacher at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

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 ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

and

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California *George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to ...

. He also became a

able to speak in 14 languages.

Constructed languages

Around 2010, while in a bar, he met

George R. R. Martin George Raymond Richard Martin (born George Raymond Martin; September 20, 1948) also known by the initials G.R.R.M. is an American author, television writer, and television producer. He is best known as the author of the unfinished series of Hi ...

, the author of the ''

A Song of Ice and Fire ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' is a series of high fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the first volume, ''A Game of Thrones'', in 1991, and published it in 1996. Martin, who originally envisioned the ser ...

'' novel series, who then introduced him to Ty Franck, co-author of ''

'' novel series. Around 2014 and 2015, during the production of the first season of ''

'' 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 the 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, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids ...

and

outer planets The Solar SystemCapitalization 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 "Sol ...

of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization 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 "Sola ...

. 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 form of contact language 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 f ...

spoken by people who came to the colonies from Earth speaking various languages from all around the world. Over the following generations, the language developed into the creole. Developing the language, Farmer modeled it as a creole based on English, with influences from other languages of different

language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...

, including

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

such as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian,

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, 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 spoke ...

such as German and Swedish,

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 * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

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

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, Zulu and others. As the result of his work, Farmer 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 appeared in 2 episodes of the third season of the show.

Works

*''The Survivors: A Novella'' (2017; novel) *''The Venusian'' (2018; short story)

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 Oakland, California Novelists from California Multilingual writers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)