The language

A Zaka program is a list of sentences, and each sentence ends with the Burmese full stop ။. The VM runs the sentences from the first to the last. A sentence follows Burmese word order: first the things it talks about, each with a small word (a particle) after it that marks its role, and last the verb, which decides what the sentence means.

ကိန်းရှင် က သည် ကိန်းပြည့် ဖြစ်၍ တန်ဖိုးသည် ၂ ဖြစ်ပါစေ။
ကိန်းရှင် ခ သည် ကိန်းပြည့် ဖြစ်၍ တန်ဖိုးသည် ၃ ဖြစ်ပါစေ။
က နှင့် ခ ၏ ပေါင်းလဒ် ကို ပြသပါ။

၅

The last sentence of the program is built like this:

က နှင့် ခ ၏ ပေါင်းလဒ် ကို ပြသပါ ။
statement
├── clause (makes a value)
│   ├── operand က, then the particle နှင့်   (first of two)
│   ├── operand ခ, then the particle ၏       (closes the operands)
│   └── verb ပေါင်းလဒ်                       (sum)
├── particle ကို                             (marks the value to show)
├── verb ပြသပါ                               (print: makes the statement)
└── ။                                        (ends the sentence)

A verb that makes a value, such as ပေါင်းလဒ်, forms an expression. A verb that gives a command, such as ပြသပါ, forms a statement. The compiler reads both with one set of rules.

The pages of this chapter

Page	What it states
Source text and words	the encoding, ။ and ၊, spaces, comments, names, number, character and string literals, reserved words
Kinds and values	the integer, decimal, character and true/false kinds with their ranges, sizes and defaults, and the short names that messages use
Conversions	the conversion expression, which pairs convert and what happens to the value, and the widening that needs no words
Expressions	literals, names and the operators: arithmetic, comparison, logic and bitwise, with precedence, division, overflow and grouping
Statements	each form of statement with its shape, the statement verbs and the error of a missing verb
Names and scope	blocks, shadowing, constants, where a name can be seen, and the errors ZK0301 to ZK0308
Functions	declaring, calling and returning
Pointers	addresses, the heap and pointer arithmetic
Ownership and borrowing	the rules that keep a pointer from outliving its block
Lists	fixed lists, their cells and kinds
Natural wording	which particle and which ending read well, and the warnings for the others

The pages go from the smallest unit to the largest: words, then the kinds of value, then expressions and statements, then names. Functions, pointers, owners and lists build on those. Where a rule has a gentler introduction, the page links to the Learn book. The error codes (ZK0101 and the rest) are listed in Error messages, and the words of the language in Reserved words.