Ada, at least, uses begin...end in part because it prevents certain kinds of errors. In its syntax you have to specify what you are ending, reducing the risk of invalid matches and increasing the likelihood of the error report system guessing correctly what you intended. E.g.:

    if X > 0 then
      Y := 0;
    end if;

Curly braces are shorter, but a close curly brace will match any open curly brace. Such is the nature of trade-offs.

I was under the impression that COBOL's English syntax was intended to be a more human-readable approach, not so much a workaround for character set limitations.