(replying to everyone in this subthread, not you) youre literally all wrong. i mean wtf why do people who know nothing have to drop their opinions into these old topics. no, you dont want verbose english in your code. that died out with COBOL. no, there are not 5:1 people asking for longer keywords, unless you count absolute beginners and (often literal) grammar nazis who consider themselves superior because they like to be overly verbose. the way c and its offspring make use of keywords is a pragmatic choice that has nothing to do with proper design, but its pragmatic, what youre asking for is just overkill and no longer pragmatic, based on the whims of some irrelevant people commenting on forums saying "w-well if i saw else if instead of elif that would have literally stopped heartbleed"