WarGrey Gyoudmon Ju

I am a native Chinese who speaks Mandarin. I have been learning English for more than 16 years, and now I am learning Japanese as the second foreign language. Given that I am a software engineer and very interested in Linguistics, regular language textbooks are hardly satisfactory. So I embarked on this project to write my own textbook.

Since practicing Chinese is not so valuable for me, I therefore choose English as the writing language. As a result, this book targets native English speakers and anyone who are interested in English and Japanese. Yes, as might be expected, comparing with Chinese is also something interesting one would find.

Microsoft Word is good but not the best one for writing rigorous books, one mentionable reason is that authors have to maintain references on their own. and friends are too cumbersome to work with directly. Racket Scribble just fits the case.

In order to conveniently generate different editions for different readers, the concept Realm is introduced to organize example sentences in this book. Meanwhile there are three prefabricated realms:

• default: Examples that can be seen in regular textbooks. Besides, this realm also serves as the fallback in case some specific examples cannot be found in the target one.

• STEM: Examples in fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and such.

• ACG: Examples in fields of animation, cartoon, game and such.

Typeseting with environment variable JAREALM set to realm name to generate the target edition, say env JAREALM=STEM raco wisemon typeset, and realm names are case sensitive.

By convention, realms are located in "stone/realm". Within each realms, .tex suffixed plain text files, don’t confused with the source files, are used to organize exmaples chapter by chapter. Examples are virtually have no namespace and therefore can be freely cross referenced in other chapters.

Typically, an example in the file consists of five parts:

• Identifier: the name that identifies the example, bracketed in []. Note that whitespaces are parts of names.

• Japanese Sentence: the mandatory part of an example, written with the primary writting system(a.k.a. kanji). Tokens are separated by whitespaces.

• Ruby: written in hiragana above kanji tokens to show their pronunciation. - is used as a placeholder of a non-kanji token.

• Mark: written in English below kana tokens to show their grammatical or pragmatical functions. Multi-marks for one token are separated by period(.). Note that marks and rubies share the second line of an example in the file.

• Translation: the meaning of the sentence, written primarily in English. Zero or multi translations are allowed. Note that ​_no_​ blank lines among translations.

For multi-sentence examples, the last four parts repeat, and sentences are separated by blank lines. Below is the content of "preface.tex" in which examples exist for illustrating only and should be placed in their own realms:

📝 stone/realm/default/preface.tex

 1 [ ex ss ]                                                          
 2 ねえ、どうも 由紀子 が  返事   を  出さ なかっ た ようだ  よ                              
 3 -           ゆきこ NOM へんじ ACC  だ   NEG  PST Belief Assert            
 4 Hey，It seems that Yukiko didn't send a reply，(I tell you)          
 5                                                                    
 6 [ ex ms ]                                                          
 7 悟空   は  クリリン と    天下一武道会         に   参加 した                         
 8 ごくう TOP -　　　　COM　てんかいちぶどうかい　DAT さんか PST                            
 9 Goku participated in the World Martial Arts Tournament with Krillin
10                                                                    
11 音楽    は   感覚 　 の   数学  であり、 数学    は  理性   の  音楽  である               
12 おんがく TOP かんかく GEN すうがく COP すうがく TOP りせい GEN おんがく COP.POL           
13 Music is the mathematics of sense                                  
14 Mathematics is the music of reason                                 

The single-sentence example with identifier | ex ss | looks like ex0.1 if it is exemplified in the book. The example counter autoincrements chapter by chapter.

Example 0.1
ねえ、どうも由紀子ゆきこがNOM返事へんじをACC出さだなかっNEGたPSTようだBeliefよAssert

Hey，It seems that Yukiko didn't send a reply，(I tell you)

Similarly, ex0.2 exemplifies the multi-sentence example | ex ms |, besides, each sentence can be referenced independently: ex0.2a, ex0.2b, etc.

Example 0.2
a 悟空ごくうはTOPクリリンとCOM天下一武道会てんかいちぶどうかいにDAT参加さんかしたPST

  Goku participated in the World Martial Arts Tournament with Krillin              

b 音楽おんがくはTOP感覚かんかくのGEN数学すうがくでありCOP、数学すうがくはTOP理性りせいのGEN音楽おんがくであるCOP.POL

  Music is the mathematics of sense                                                
  Mathematics is the music of reason