I've always been fascinated by "open source" books, not in the sense that I want to steal their contents, but in the sense oh cool their infrastructure is open, (so if you wanted to start making your own book, you would have a template to start) Since most books that are ever published, you have absolutely no idea, how are they made? Which software do they use? Do they use TeX? or propietary technologies?

I know this is not code, but a license would be nice to have even if not open source, source available, what not.

Hi, I've glanced over your book and it seems very well-structured. Certainly a breath of fresh air from the heavily European-influenced mess that is traditional "Japanese grammar" in the West.

I was hoping to read this on my Kindle Paperwhite, which does technically have PDF support but it is very poor. Similarly, the HTML version is not well-supported by its browser. Do you have any plans to convert this to EPUB?

On section "4.2.4.8 のみ — Nothing but", one of the example containing the word 試験, but the furigana says しかん　instead of しけん

A lot of my friends were linking me the guide and after I finished chapter 1 I thought wow this is the best overview of Japanese ever. The author truly understands all the differences between the languages and gives a brief history of how kanji evolved etc. However after reaching chapter 2 it became completly unreadable for me... it went from a thing an average person could read and understand in simple terms, to a scientific journal for PHD linguistics students. I appreciate the fact that everything is so in depth but its just impossible for me to read without my brain starting to hurt, I don't know all the fancy words like inflection... I am not a linguistics student, I am just a normal dude trying to understand Japanese.

Another thing that was mind boggling for me is that the guide went from using romaji and then the next chapter completly switching to complex kanji without furigana! Why is it so hard to just keep the romaji and furigana? You have to realise not everyone has the same learning process, not everyone learns kanji first, some people only learn kanji in order of JLPT levels, some learn all 3000 at once, some like me leave that until later. I started with core 10k vocab + grammar + watching tv shows / anime in between. So far I got by reading furigana just fine and plan to start kanji studies several months later.

I don't know why I made this issue because I doubt you would be willing to change the guide, the ideal guide I can picture in my head would have two sections or even two separate guides, an easy to read overview with charts showing all the particles and rules in one place, kinda like a quick reference guide and then the other part being the very in depth version explaining everything.

Anyway this is just a perspective of someone starting out and finding your guide, I just wanted you to see things from a different perspective, please close this issue if you want.

Currently the wording describing the use of っ says this:

In Japanese, because there are no actual 'loose' consonants, the doubling is represented by a special character: a つ (or ツ) written either half height (in horizontal writing) or half width (in vertical writing) to indicate the pause.

This is not clear that っ actually represents consonant gemination, not merely a pause. For words like 雑誌 (ざっし) the difference becomes clear. Rather than a pause followed by a "sh" sound, the "sh" sound is simply twice as long. The wording should be updated to reflect this. It may also be advisable to add example words which show this difference.

data/pages/en-GB/set_phrases.txt:

お先に:
The origin of this phrase is お先に失礼します. Also the reply to it, ご苦労様くろさまでした should only be spoken to people of lower rank. Another valid response would be: お先にどうぞ (Go ahead).

はじめまして:
More formal version is 初めてお目にかかります

You can actually say “swim the ocean” because swim is both a transitive verb and an intransitive verb (and a noun), if you look it up in a dictionary. The same seems to hold for many other traversal verbs. Further, note that a transitive verb not just can be used with a direct object, but it’s mandatory. I just can’t find an example where a word is only transitive verb, but e. g. the verb “give” is almost always used with a direct object (and an indirect object). A lookup of the Japanese verb 「泳ぐ」(to swim) didn’t yield any specification of whether it’s 自動詞 or 他動詞.

This data is open to contributions

Typos? Missing, incomplete, or wrong explanations? Suggestions to improve the book on the whole? If you have a github account (which are free to set up) you can actually edit the files on this repository and send those changes my way automatically in a fairly simple, painless way.

Spotted a typo?

Cool! If you spot any typos and you want to fix them, head over to one of the chapters, open them in your browser, and then hit the "edit" button in the upper-ish right (next to 'raw', 'blame', etc).

Simply fix the typo, and then at the bottom of the page in the comment-form-looking-form, add a quick description of the changes. Then hit the big green button and I'll be notified of the change you'd like to see made. All I have to do is press another big green button and the change'll be committed for the rest of the world to see.

Missing something?

If you think the book should have something that it currently doesn't, then file a "new issue", with a short subject descriptor, and an "as long as you feel it needs to be to describe what you think should be added" description, and I'll be automatically notified of your request.

some other idea?

Just file an issue and describe what you'd like to see happening, and we can discuss it as much as we like and/or need to.

In chapter "Verb grammar", section "Inflection bases", the 未然形 of various adjectives is given as 高く, 楽しく, 薄く and 大きく. Similarly, in section "Basic inflections", the 未然形 of ない is said to be なく.

However, the Wiktionary gives 高かろ, 楽しかろ, 薄かろ, 大きかろ and なかろ. This way feels more consistent with section "Pseudo-future: おう/よう" from chapter "More grammar", since the pseudo-future is then made simply by adding "う" to the 未然形 of either verbs or verbal adjectives. Granted, this then implies changing the description of the negations of verbal adjectives.

Is the 未然形 of adjective a strictly-defined thing? If so, which way is the correct way? If not, which one is the more practical?

Thanks for clarifying this part!

even in 2019 ruby support is terrible, so it might be worth switching over to flexbox layout instead, and hope that looks more correct.

"Arabian" is an adjective relating to the Arabian peninsula, while Arabic is the language, since it was in a big list of languages I assume the latter was intended.

"kanji sentence finaliser" sounds a bit odd!

I'd say "closing mark" is a more convenient, short, description!

This would require:

• inventory which characters are used from which blocks (this should be easily scriptable: just run through the content files and build a list of used codepoints, then dump that to a file)
• determine which free font(s) can act as basis for creating a dedicated subset font
  • the book itself already uses HAN NOM A and B, so we might be able to just subset out of those.
  • alternatively Hanazono might work?
• making a subset WOFF file with radical coverage.

The example tables immediately following the sentence:

Having covered the "what they look like", let's look at what this means for a number of verbs from both classes, and for verbal adjectives:

both have the heading "五段 verbs" - presumably one was supposed to be "一段 verbs"?

Hello,

it seems that the online book is done, and the URL is interpreted as part of the parent blog (I get a “Post redirection” message).

される is technically a passive form of the causative (使役) helper verb す
Since the causative helper verb す is not mentioned in the book, it is hard for readers not familiar with it to follow the example 待たされていました. It would make sense to re-write it as 待たせていました or add explanation of す to the causative section.

Moreover, in the Japanese きれいに 分わ ける, translating to the English "to divide cleanly", the に marks the noun きれい, "clean/neat/tidy", as being used adverbially, "neatly, cleanly".

Is きれい not an adjective rather than a noun as the sentence says?

Section 2.3.22 - Past tense
...
The common explanation for だ is that it came from で, the continuative of です, and the verb ある, to form the copula である. This copula is actually still used in modern Japanese in formal settings. However, the で+あ in this である has contracted over time, to form だる, which explains the 未然形 for だ, which is だろ.

1. The first highlighted statement is inconsistent with でし (連用形 of です introduced earlier in section 2.3.2)
2. The second highlighted text presents a statement with implied premises not obvious to the reader. Since 未然形 of ある is あら it is not obvious how だろ sprang from だる. Detailed explanation of だろ etymology will dramatically improve the clarity of the paragraph.

The section on 'Essential particles'→と gives an example with 考える (to think):

"Another example is the verb 考える, which means "to think" when used with を, but "to think about" when used with と."

However, looking at examples of 考える over at WWWJDIC, it looks like the reverse (i.e. X と 考える meaning 'think that X', and X を 考える meaning 'think about X') fits better.

What I was looking for was some help at baby's first translation attempt, so I'm inclined to go with the WWWJDIC examples, but this seeming contradiction had me curious.

Although the challenge here is of course that all the fonts used to build this book are not free and cannot be put on github. They'd have to get pulled in by something like Travis from "somewhere" in a way that others cannot equally simply (illegally) download from.

In section 3.2.3.1, the example sentence そのドアがよく軋っています seems to suggest that the て-form of 軋む is 軋って, whereas it is in fact 軋んで. I could be mistaken as I am a beginner.

In section 2.3.2 - Inflection the following table shows spelling でしよ for 未然形 of です:

             です	だ	copula

未然形 でしよ だろ だろ
連用形 でし だっ (で) で
終止形 です だ です/だ
連体形 です な です/な
已然形 なら なら

According to http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/151501/meaning/m1u/%E3%81%A7%E3%81%99/
it should be でしょ

The text size for kanji with furigana is tiny in mobile browsers like Chrome for android. Hiragana and Katakana do not face this problem. One has to zoom in almost every few seconds for reading the kanji because of the minute scale which is very inconvenient. Here's a screenshot for reference.

It would be great if the guide could be optimized for mobile devices.