Allowing non-ASCII identifiers (Fran?ois Pinard)

[Doug Fort]

This is an excerpt from a much longer post on the python-dev mailing list.
I'm responding here, to avoid cluttering up python-dev.

[François Pinard]
<snip>
>Some English readers might not really imagine, but it is a constant
>misery, having to mangle identifiers while documenting and thinking
>in languages other than English, merely because the Python notion of
>letter is limited to the English subset.  Granted, keywords and standard
>library use English, this is Python, and this is not at stake here!
>However, there is a good part of code in local (or in-house) programs
>which is thought as our crafted code, and even the linguistic change is
>useful (to us) for segregating between what comes from the language and
>what comes from us.  The idea is extremely appealing of being able to
>craft and polish our code (comments, strings, identifiers) to make it as
<nice as it could get, while thinking in our native, natural language.
>-- 
>François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard
</snip>

Monglot English speakers, like me, might also benefit from reading
well-crafted Python code with non-english identifiers and comments.  I learn
best by anchoring new ideas in a familiar context.

One of my (non-programmer) friends is improving his French by working
through the French versions of the Harry Potter novels.