Are there programming languages that rely on non-latin alphabets?

Question

Every programming language I have ever seen has been based on the Latin alphabet, this is not surprising considering I live in Canada... But it only really makes sense that there would be programming languages based on other alphabets, or else bright computer scientists across the world would have to learn a new alphabet to go on in the field. I know for a fact that people in countries dominated by other alphabets develop languages based off the Latin alphabet (eg. Ruby from Japan), but just how common is it for programming languages to be based off of other alphabets like Arabic, or Cyrillic, or even writing systems which are not alphabetic but rather logographic in nature such as Japanese Kanji? Also are any of these languages in active widespread use, or are they mainly used as teaching tools? This is something that has bugged me since I started programming, and I have never run across someone who could think of a real answer.

Answer 1

Have you seen Perl?

Answer 2

APL is probably the most widely known. It even has a cool keyboard overlay (or was it a special keyboard you had to buy?):

In the non-alphabetic category, we also have programming languages like LabVIEW, which is mostly graphical. (You can label objects, and you can still do string manipulation, so there's some textual content.) LabVIEW has been used in data acquisition and automation for years, but gained a bit of popularity when it became the default platform for Lego Mindstorms.

Answer 3

There's a list on Wikipedia. I don't think any of them is really prevalent though. Many programmers can learn to write programs with english keywords even if they didn't understand the language. Ruby is a good example, you'll still see Japanese identifiers and comments in some Ruby code.