to zxc?
Closer together,
saves a lot of time.
Not on a German keyboard… 
(This is all based on a right handed user)
Most people can’t touch type so they probably hit the keys with one finger so it might not make much of a difference for those users. If you touch type then it doesn’t take much to rewire your muscle memory and use your left index finger to hit r,t, and y, it can feel a bit weird because you normally hit y with your right index finger but if you right hand is on the mouse you gotta do what you gotta do.
I actually learnt something new toady I don’t know Germany keyboards where different from the English language ones.
Not on a french keyboard… 
Many country have different layout:
Azerty ( French ), Qwertz ( German, central europe), Qwerty, Let along specific difference over language…
XYZ are there because the 3D axis, if someone want to change there hotkey, they can do it easely. But i dont see much the point to change it for all, when most are used to there keyboard
@Seb and Hard
Not sure who had the idea to pointlessly change every keyboard into different languages,
why couldn’t they have just made it like Arabic keyboards where the layout is US English but has the Arabic letters printed on the side of each English key?
I believe it is still derived from the typewriter layout. Different languages will have different letters that are most commonly used.
Exactly … Then each country on there own have try do their own standard. typically on “special characters”, some are not used on some country, when they are mandatory on other.
They are many project for unify the standard, but as you can imagine, its complicated.
Actually no, zxc doesn’t make any sense to constrain z,x & y-axis.
Blender is one of the few 3d apps where the shortcut key makes sense for it’s command.
This is a very anglo-centric point of view… for instance, what would “zxc” look like on a bépo layout ?
(I don’t use bépo with Blender though, never tried and it would probably necessitate a complete keymap review)
I have to say its a pointless debate; the best way would be customizable keyboard (with mini led screen buttons) where keys can be configured via software which defines the keyboard layout.This was used to some extend with Intuos 4 L tablets where shortcut buttons had led screens next to them; which you could assign different keys or key combinations or key modifiers and there would be text which labels that button screen.
I think it doesn’t make any of sense.
having the axis label correspond to the keys is worth the slight amount of hand movement necessary to reach y
i could see zxc being faster, but that speed would be negated by having to mash all of them to rediscover which axis is mapped to which button every time you try to use that shortcut.
I am left handed and for me those keys are in the ideal positions … sure by dumb luck but hey having some default keybindings that don’t force a left handed freak like myself to contort sure feels nice