Probably typing on a non english keyboard. When I learned C a long time ago, I read somewhere 'isnt it nice that one doesnt need a lot of keystrokes like for begin and end', and I thought pls give me begin and end instead of this unpleasent slow hand movement.
The author was born and raised in Brooklyn and went to Cornell, if I remember correctly. As far as I know, English was his only language, and he was almost certainly using either US QWERTY or Dvorak keyboard layout.
Spot on. It's the reason many non-native speaker developers I know nevertheless use an English keyboard layout. I personally made my own hybrid layout that is basically an English US layout with the letters rearranged according to my native layout.