Contribute

Japaneseness is built in the open. Every translation, every worksheet, and every line of code is on GitHub under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Translation help — most needed

Right now, the Yorùbá and Bahasa Indonesia worksheets are running on machine translation (Claude API) marked review_status: beta. Native speakers reviewing them is the single highest-value contribution.

To suggest a fix:

1. Find the file at content/languages/<lang>.yaml in the GitHub repo.
2. Open an issue using the translation issue template (or just email a screenshot of the typo).
3. For full PRs: edit the YAML, set reviewed: true on the keys you've fixed, and open a pull request.

Adding a new language

Phase 1 covers English, Bahasa Indonesia, and Yorùbá. Phase 2 will add 4–10 more languages selected by what learners actually request. To propose a language:

• Open a GitHub Discussion titled “Request: <language>”.
• Tell us how many learners of Japanese are in that language community, and link to any existing materials (so we don't reinvent).
• If you can commit to reviewing the auto-translated first draft, say so — it's the bottleneck.

Code & tooling

The site is Astro + Tailwind. The PDF pipeline is XeLaTeX + a thin Python wrapper. Everything is documented in CLAUDE.md and SETUP.md at the repo root.

License

Code: MIT. Content (worksheets, translations, generated PDFs): CC BY-SA 4.0. You can print, modify, translate, and redistribute, even commercially, as long as you credit Japaneseness and share derivatives under the same license.

Funding

Phase 1 is a solo, unfunded project. If we hit Phase 2 (10+ languages, printable book editions), donations via Open Collective will open. For now, the best support is a contribution above or telling a Japanese teacher this exists.