[xigoi]

I’d only count closed-class words as keywords. Open-class words, which comprise the vast majority of the dictionary, are more like a standard library.

[emseetech]

You can't communicate at all with only closed class words. You can write fully capable programs with only built-in keywords though, so I wouldn't make that comparison.

[flir]

Not sure a keyword only C program can communicate, either. printf isn't a keyword...

[emseetech]

It won’t be portable or a good idea but you can use os/hardware specific directives.

But this is drifting. The point of it all is that the ambiguity of programming languages are already high despite all our best efforts.

The ambiguity of natural language is many orders of magnitude worse.

Which is great for poetry but we’re not writing poetry.