ABCDE Language

Eight semantic atoms. Five letters. No inflection.

Open the live browser viewer — choose Japanese/English word cards to build a sentence. No download or installation needed.

ABCDE / アベケデ [a.be.ke.de] is an experimental minimal language for basic connection, survival and mutual aid. This v1 review draft separates what atoms say from what people conventionally mean. It includes a small offline Japanese/English reference interpreter.

日本語 · Specification · Dictionary · Examples · Migration

The eight atoms

Atom	IPA	Core field	意味の核
A	[a]	motion/change	動き・変化
E	[e]	relation	関係
BA	[ba]	self/source	自己・起点
BE	[be]	other/target	他者・対象
CA	[ka]	entity/matter	存在・物
CE	[ke]	positive/desirable	肯定的・望ましい
DA	[da]	action/power	行為・力
DE	[de]	negative/undesirable	否定的・望ましくない

Join atoms into words: the final atom is the head; earlier atoms modify it. ADACA is an entity related to motion/action; water is its survival convention. The structural meaning and conventional reading are displayed separately. No new letters or conjugations are needed.

A small reliable grammar

• Use subject → predicate → object/target. Exchanging participants changes who does what to whom. Predicate heads are DA, CE, DE.
• Short sentences can omit subject/object. Missing roles remain unspecified; if two parses fit, retain both. A lone non-predicate is a fragment.
• Optional E? (question) or A! (emphasis) goes first, then optional A- (future) or E- (past). No tense marker means unmarked time.
• Attach DE- to one word to negate it. Emphasis/negation alone do not encode commands; request readings are labeled conventions.
• Separate sentences with newlines. Counts attach to terms (3BACA). External labels such as [Tokyo] are opaque; repeated words do not mark plurality.
• Final E reference expresses a relation. The relative-days convention makes future + E 3ACA a candidate for “in 3 days”, anchored to the utterance.

DEDE is intensified negative evaluation, not small. ADA is motion/action; water is ADACA. ACA deliberately retains day/here/red as contextual candidates. Unknown compounds still have atom breakdowns. The interpreter never quietly adds “warm”, “want”, “I”, or a destination absent from the input.

Try it in a browser

Open the published viewer directly. JavaScript must be enabled; no Python, Node.js, server setup or API key is needed.

For offline use, download the repository and open the downloaded docs/index.html in a browser, keeping the files in docs together. The HTML file on GitHub is the source listing; use the published link above to launch the viewer online.

In “ことばを選ぶ” (choose words), click any of the 28 cards with Japanese and English labels to append an ABCDE word. “私” → “欲しい” → “水” produces BA BACE ADACA. Example and phrase buttons append a new sentence on a new line, keeping prior input. Use “次の文へ” for a line break, then “読みを確認” to check the reading. Word order and omitted roles are never silently repaired.

“手入力” (manual input) supports Japanese/English → ABCDE and ABCDE → Japanese/English. The composer and each manual direction keep separate drafts. Undo/redo covers the last 100 operations, including clear. Drafts live only in this page's memory and disappear on reload/close; no input is sent or saved to device storage.

Literal structure, conventional candidates, assumptions, omitted roles, and alternate readings remain separate; ABCDE input also supports a core-only mode. Native-language reverse translation accepts registered phrases only. The UI uses white, black and yellow; controls are Japanese, while glosses and assumptions are bilingual. See detailed controls, verification and publication steps.

Try the Python reference CLI

From this checkout, with Python 3.9+ (no installation, API key, or network):

python3 -m abcde 'A! CEDA BA'
python3 -m abcde --from ja '水がほしい'
python3 -m abcde --from en 'Help that person'
python3 -m abcde --json 'A- EADA E 3ACA'
python3 -m abcde --core-only 'ADACA'
python3 -m abcde --phrases

Omit text to read stdin. Quote spaces and shell punctuation. JSON exposes atoms, roles, negation, conventional candidates and diagnostics. valid means valid structure, not complete meaning; ambiguous signals multiple parses/readings. Missing participants are still reported. Invalid/unsupported input exits 2. Reverse translation accepts only listed phrases, not arbitrary sentences. Whitespace is normalized and English case ignored; punctuation must match.

Survival examples

These are conventional candidates, not guaranteed natural-language meanings. The full examples include structural glosses and assumptions.

ABCDE	日本語候補	English candidate
BACE ADACA	水がほしい（欲しい主体は省略）	Water is wanted (experiencer omitted)
A! DE-CECADA	食べないで	Do not eat
A! CEDA	助けて（助ける側・助けられる側は未指定）	Help (helper and beneficiary unspecified)
A! CEDA BA	私を助けて	Help me
A! CEDA BEBACA	あの人を助けて	Help that person
A- EADA E 3ACA	3日後に戻る（主語は省略）	Return in 3 days (actor omitted)

Edit and verify

python3 tools/build_docs.py
python3 tools/build_static.py
python3 tools/build_docs.py --check
python3 tools/build_static.py --check
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Edit language.json for atoms, markers and lexical conventions; examples.json for examples and exact reverse phrases. Generate dictionary/examples and marked README/spec sections from them. Grammar prose stays in the specification and is exercised by conformance fixtures. There is no second translator dictionary. Static data and diagnostic text are generated from the same reference. The JavaScript grammar implementation is checked against full Python result JSON. JavaScript tests need Node.js only during development and are skipped if it is absent. REVIEW.md preserves the initial design review; current viewer behavior, verification and publication details are in STATIC_VIEWER.md.

Adaptations describes decorative scripts. The original promo video illustrates v0; it is historical material, not this draft's specification.

Created by Yoshie Yamada. MIT license.