Beltstrike

[boggo2300]

We had a similar thing here in Australia. Received Pronunciation was used by radio and television presenters well into the 1980's before fading out to normal sounding people.

Normal to us, anyway

There is, however, an annoying (to me) reporter mode of speaking where they stress EVERY other word or so.

"Police SAY that the SUSPECT was ARRESTED with a MACHETE."

Varies by channel. Our local news ones don't do it. Tends to be the roving reporters over the anchors, too.

received pronounciation actually came from the BBC to the ABC

 

[boggo2300]

And I'll bet you Aussie English is a lot closer to some regional dialect of Transportation era British English than it is to any contemporary British dialect.

(Diasporan Punjabi has undergone notably less tonogenesis than the dialect spoken back home.)

Australian English is VERY close to cockney tbh oddly since most Transportee's were Irish

 

[rinku]

Overstated, though the Irish were the largest non-English group.

Roughly, it was 70% English and Welsh, 24% Irish, 5% Scots and a diverse 1%.

There was a surge of Irish during the Famine years, but those numbers include that.

You do have to take into account the free settler intake though. I've got much more Scots ancestry as a result.

 

[Condottiere]

Cultural imperialism.

A lot of people speak English, quite a number better than those who have it as the mother tongue.

Entertainment media could slow down that evolution to a crawl.

Even with universal translators, that could be a rather aspirational accomplishment.

 

[rinku]

Maybe not universal translators, but we've reached ubiquitous ones. It's already a chat feature to click a twisty and get a decent instant translation.
Had many nice multi language conversations where no one spoke anyone else's language.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

Maybe not universal translators, but we've reached ubiquitous ones. It's already a chat feature to click a twisty and get a decent instant translation.
Had many nice multi language conversations where no one spoke anyone else's language.

A couple of decades back I was doing some IT requirements management work in Paris. The company official language was English, and most people were OK with talking to me in that. One guy was wanting to resist the Anglophone linguistic imperialism and insisted on French. He soon discovered that my French, although functional for reading, sounds awful, and he soon got fed up with me butchering his beautiful language. So we agreed that I would speak to him in English and he would speak to me in French

 

[CordwainerFish]

You do have to take into account the free settler intake though. I've got much more Scots ancestry as a result.

One of my ancestors left Ireland more than a decade before the Famine and, to the end of his days, refused to say why. I like to imagine a girl was involved.

 

[Condottiere]

Air traffic control is conducted in English.

 

[swordtart]

A couple of decades back I was doing some IT requirements management work in Paris. The company official language was English, and most people were OK with talking to me in that. One guy was wanting to resist the Anglophone linguistic imperialism and insisted on French. He soon discovered that my French, although functional for reading, sounds awful, and he soon got fed up with me butchering his beautiful language. So we agreed that I would speak to him in English and he would speak to me in French

That is rather a shame, though wholly believable.

It is perhaps better if each participant tries to speak in the others language. They will tend to have a more limited vocabulary than the native speaker and it will generally be a subset of the native speakers. They will not be using local slang or idioms that would confuse a non-native speaker. They will likely be speaking carefully and more slowly. If they mispronounce a word the native speaker will have dozens of words they might have meant at their finger tips whereas a non-native speaker might not have any. The non-native speaker wont have to struggle to translate every word as they are familiar with the flow of the language.

If a non-native English speaker told me "I will tomorrow to the dogs be going with which to catch the fairy". I could immediately work out that dogs is a mangled pronunciation of docks and fairy is ferry. I would not be distracted by the possibility of the idiom "going to the dogs" being scrambled into it. The random order of words and muddled tenses would not present any issue in understanding. If on the other hand I heard that sentence in French I would probably need it repeated several times and even then I might not really understand.

Most other nations would also be charmed that you were making an attempt and probably offer constructive help. The French not so much so

 

[rinku]

One of my ancestors left Ireland more than a decade before the Famine and, to the end of his days, refused to say why. I like to imagine a girl was involved.

It's a lot simpler where there's records of court proceedings and the rap sheet, as there are for roughly a third of my immigrant ancestors... no gold rush ones that I know of, though. They were either well before that or well after.

Bit of trivia - something like 2% of the adult male population of the UK left for the Australian gold fields in the 1850s. Bringing that back to on topic, Belter populations could grow very quickly if a real strike happens.

 

[Anstett]

I wonder how big/rich of a strike it needs to be to attract Corporations from outside of the system to bring in the facilities to extract the resources?

It must be rare-ish for a system to not have a belt, a nearby system to have a belt and to export the resources.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Belter populations could grow very quickly if a real strike happens.

Then fall just as quickly when another nearby system has a big strike.

For some ideas on "belter culture" you might want to read the E.E. "Doc" Smith book Gray Lensman

Link to it on Project Gutenberg Gray Lensman

 

[rinku]

It would have to be a concentration of something typically found in trace amounts. Radioactives are always a good fallback - maybe left over from an astronomically recent event that have not yet had enough time to decay? As an example, a rogue planet that collides with a system one, leaving a debris belt (maybe in the form of a ring system) that's unusually high in core material and heavy metals. Plus maybe some unusual and useful minerals formed from the impact?

While a super rare event, it's also something that might have happened at any point in time. A million years ago; 10,000 years ago. Last week.

 

[rinku]

I wonder how big/rich of a strike it needs to be to attract Corporations from outside of the system to bring in the facilities to extract the resources?

It must be rare-ish for a system to not have a belt, a nearby system to have a belt and to export the resources.

Probably quite variable. You also have places like Glisten that are industrial hubs in their own right. It's not likely there are many normal belts nearby that are worked much, given you could probably import from Glisten for less.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I just want to mention 33 Polyhymnia here. The densest substance currently known to humaniti is Osmium, which is ~23 times denser than water. 33 Polyhymnia is estimated to be about 75 times denser than water.

This might just be a measurement error, or it could be that there were some ultra-heavy stable elements around at the formation of the solar system. All the ultra-heavy elements in planetary-sized bodies would quickly settle to the core & become inaccessible -- but some asteroids could contain them in useful quantities.

33 Polyhymnia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[rinku]

Indeed. But what happens in the formation of one system is likely to happen in others - once you have a truly star spanning setting with easy travel rarities rapidly become more common.

As well, despite a resource's inherent rarity, there needs to be demand for it to make extraction viable. If all the 33 Polyhymnian needs of a subsector can be met from the belt of its industrial hub system, even a rich find two jumps away is less important.

 

[Midas]

It would have to be a concentration of something typically found in trace amounts. Radioactives are always a good fallback - maybe left over from an astronomically recent event that have not yet had enough time to decay? As an example, a rogue planet that collides with a system one, leaving a debris belt (maybe in the form of a ring system) that's unusually high in core material and heavy metals. Plus maybe some unusual and useful minerals formed from the impact?

While a super rare event, it's also something that might have happened at any point in time. A million years ago; 10,000 years ago. Last week.

How long would it take for a smashed planet's core to cool enough to work? Could the once core asteroids be worked while still close to core temperatures?

 

[CordwainerFish]

How long would it take for a smashed planet's core to cool enough to work?

I don't really have the thermo to do a BOTEC, but just as a PDOOMA I'd say at least on the order of a million years, depending on starting and desired ending temperatures.

 

[swordtart]

I don't really have the thermo to do a BOTEC, but just as a PDOOMA I'd say at least on the order of a million years, depending on starting and desired ending temperatures.

Best start now then

 

[Valkyrie]

I use to have this Box set now I just have a PDF when I could no longer find my box. But it coverings asteroid mining in a lot of detail as well as the Belter Career path and covers the Bowman sector in Sub Sector 268 of the Spinward Marches