Python Statements/Keyword Localization

[Emanuele D'Arrigo]

Thank you all for the insights. I particularly like the broad spread
of opinions on the subject.

Indeed when I wrote the original post my thoughts were with those
young students of non-English speaking countries that start learning
to program before they learn English. My case is almost one of those:
I started at home when I was 13, toying around with Basic, and at the
time not only I didn't know English, but for a few more years I would
be learning only French. Later I did start learning English but I
still found that while learning programming in Pascal at school its
English keywords were somehow an interruption of my mental flow. At
the time (20 years ago) localization wasn't a particularly big thing
and this issue would have been a bit of a lost cause. But as the world
is becoming more and more interconnected I think it is important that
we all make an effort to respect cultural needs and sensitivities of
both non-western adults and youngsters alike.

Ultimately I certainly appreciate the ubiquity of English even though
in the interest of fairness and efficiency I'd prefer the role of
common language to be given to a constructed language, such as Ido.
But it doesn't take a particularly religious person to see that "do to
others as you would want them do to you" tends to be a valid
principle, and in the same way the world would be at a loss if an
Indian university came up with a wonderful programming language
available only in Sanskrit, the world is at a loss not having a
beautiful language such as Python natively available in other
scripts.

Again, thank you all!

Manu