Basics

Plain English

NERD uses words, not symbols. Every keyword is an English word that tokenizes as a single token in LLMs.

-- Instead of: a + b
a plus b

-- Instead of: a == b
a eq b

-- Instead of: return x
ret x

No Symbols

No curly braces. No semicolons. No parentheses. No arrows. Just words and whitespace.

-- Traditional
function add(a, b) { return a + b; }

-- NERD
fn add a b
ret a plus b

No Brackets

Function calls don't need parentheses. Arguments are space-separated.

-- Traditional
sqrt(pow(a, 2) + pow(b, 2))

-- NERD
math sqrt asq plus bsq

Newlines Matter

Each statement is on its own line. No statement terminators needed.

fn hypotenuse a b
let asq call square a
let bsq call square b
ret math sqrt asq plus bsq

Words as Operators

+	→	plus
-	→	minus
*	→	times
/	→	over
==	→	eq
!=	→	neq
<	→	lt
>	→	gt
&&	→	and
||	→	or
!	→	not

Words as Numbers

Small integers have word equivalents for maximum token efficiency.

if op eq zero ret ok a plus b
if op eq one ret ok a minus b
if op eq two ret ok a times b

Why This Works

LLMs tokenize common English words as single tokens. Symbols often fragment.

• function → 1 token
• === → 2-3 tokens
• plus → 1 token
• >= → 2 tokens

Result: same logic, 50-70% fewer tokens.

Comments

-- double dash for comments
# hash works too

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See Spec for the full language reference.