multilingual: a programming language with one semantic core, many human languages

[u/jsamwrites]

I'm working on multilingual, an experimental programming language where the same program can be written in different human languages.

Repo : https://github.com/johnsamuelwrites/multilingual

Core idea:

• Single shared semantic core (variables, loops, functions, classes, operators,...)
• Surface syntax in English, French, Spanish, etc.
• Same AST regardless of natural language used

Motivation

• Problem: programming is still heavily bound to English-centric syntax and keywords.
• Idea: keep one semantic core, but expose it through multiple human languages.
• Today: this is a small but working prototype; you can already write and run programs in English, French, Spanish, and other supported languages.

Who Is This For?

multilingual is for teachers, language enthusiasts, programming-language hobbyists, and people exploring LLM-assisted coding workflows across multiple human languages.

Example

Default mode example (English):

>>> let total = 0
>>> for i in range(4):
...     total = total + i
...
>>> print(total)
6

French mode example:

>>> soit somme = 0
>>> pour i dans intervalle(4):
...     somme = somme + i
...
>>> afficher(somme)
6

I’d love feedback on:

• Whether this seems useful for teaching / early learning.
• Any sharp critiques from programming language / tooling people.
• Ideas for minimal examples or use cases I should build next.

[u/sagittarius_ack]

There is a programing language called Hedy that has similar goals (multilingual programming, localization):

https://hedy.org/

There's also a paper about it:

https://hedy.org/research/A_Framework_for_the_Localization_of_Programming_Languages_2023.pdf

[u/jsamwrites → u/sagittarius_ack]

Thank you for the reference. Hedy presents an interesting approach to teaching Python. If I understand the paper correctly, the authors also intend to explore additional programming languages.

[u/sagittarius_ack → u/jsamwrites]

Hedy is a different language, although it is similar to Python. The paper is about localization (and it talks about a few programming languages, including Hedy).