Belter

Belters are those living in the asteroid belt. Though each major colony has its own culture, there are a great many similarities throughout the Belt, and with a few notable exceptions (such as Cereans, Jumpers, and Vestans), most people living in the asteroid belt consider themselves Belters first and locals of their specific colonies second.

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

Due to the strong corporate interests in the Belt, English is the region's lingua franca, though the Belt does have a significant population of people who speak Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Urdu, Indonesian, Spanish, Tswana and the Martial dialect of Russian as second and occasionally third languages. The English spoken in the Belt is also a rather unique (and notoriously profane) dialect which can be challenging for English speakers from other parts of the system to understand, though most Belters can code-switch to a more standard dialect as needed.

Culture and cultural heritage

The Belt is fundamentally a melting pot, and has only grown more diverse over the years as colonization of the system has nurtured new cultures and as more and more Terran immigrants move out into the stars, but the ethnicities that originally formed the majority of the region's work force still have fairly large majorities in a lot of areas. Ceres, for example, is mostly peopled by people of Indian and Latin American heritage, while The Ring's population is mostly of Chinese descent, and Kakanyo's Folly is still almost exclusively populated by people of Bantu heritage.

Common Dress code

The Belt has been described by some as a fashion wasteland. With often highly restricted access to goods not owned by the company operating a given colony, and a general abundance of occupations and lifestyles that require ruthlessly practical clothing, the vast majority of Belters tend to dress very simply, in sturdy, practical work clothing. There is some variation in style between colonies and companies, and some Belters working in less restrictive colonies do make efforts to personalize their clothing, but to an outsider, everyone in the Belt basically dresses the same.

Related Organizations