Vim inherited the keyboard mapping from vi. vi was designed on a QWERTY (American) keyboard, but the particular terminal that the author used had arrows printed

Vim inherited the keyboard mapping from vi. vi was designed on a QWERTY (American) keyboard, but the particular terminal that the author used had arrows printed on the hjkl keycaps. More information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi