Melting pot

The festival is a true racial melting pot; people from dozens of countries take part speaking many languages.

Three-quarters of a century ago this edifice, garishly handsome in the city’s brashest manner, had been dedicated, on the cornerstone, “to Pythianism”, without any embarrassment at the clash of Greek and Mesopotamian metaphors. Such plundering and jumbling of the storehouse of yesterday’s empires, this melting pot or métissage of past power, was the true indicator of present might.

Believe it or not, Belter slang — or, more officially, Belter Creole — isn't a completely made-up way of communicating. It's actually a mix of several Earth languages spoken by the original settlers in the Asteroid Belt colonies — very appropriate, as the Belt is a melting pot of several different races, customs and backgrounds.