I really don't think this is as bad as people make it out to be. As you said, it's totally possible -- actually fairly straightforward -- to build a programmin

I really don't think this is as bad as people make it out to be. As you said, it's totally possible -- actually fairly straightforward -- to build a programming language with keywords that can be in various languages. Perl has a package that uses Latin constructs instead of English. So if there were a huge demand for this kind of thing, we'd probably see a lot of it. There are other professions which require the use of foreign terminology: lawyers use Latin, doctors use Greek & Latin, chefs use French. Sure, it makes things a little difficult at first, but it's probably not any more difficult than learning technical jargon in you native tongue. In fact, in some ways, it might be easier because the literal translation of "echo" might not actually make much sense to a Japanese speaker in the context of programming, whereas, with English you can teach a Japanese student that "echo" means to put characters on the screen. I remember reading about an effort Britain had to make the law more "accessible" by using English instead of Latin, and it just made things more difficult because instead of seeing words you had no idea the meaning of, now one knew what the statement said, but it would mean something completely different than they would expect.