[tacostakohashi]

There are, of course, programming languages that have non-English keywords, they're just not very popular.

I guess if you're learning all of C/C++/Java/Python/etc... the "English" keyword meanings are a tiny/trivial part of what you need to learn anyway.

Also, using English means you only need ASCII, and a US keyboard layout which allows easy entry of the printable ASCII characters. For Japanese, Arabic, etc... you need need Unicode, input methods, UTF-8 / UTF-16 etc., all of a sudden there's a whole lot more to go wrong than if you use English in ASCII.

[jayathra]

ASCII and a US keyboard do keep things simple. But given that modern systems already support Unicode everywhere (from websites to filenames), do you think the complexity argument still holds today?