Frankly, I don't think the fact a lot of computer languages use keywords that happen to resemble English words is a big problem for non-native speakers of English. I mean, native speakers of English don't find operators much harder than map, open or exec, because the operator symbols aren't part of their daily language while the function names are? Even in primary school, kids learn to deal with + and -, and they wouldn't have mastered arithmetic two years sooner if the books used "add" and "subtract" instead.

What could make it harder for people not able to read English is that there's far more documentation and literature written in English than in other languages.

Abigail