I can't comment on Scala, but I think Clojure is starting to get to the point where you can learn just Clojure and not have to think about Java until much later

I can't comment on Scala, but I think Clojure is starting to get to the point where you can learn just Clojure and not have to think about Java until much later. At some point you'll assuredly interact with Java some, but there are a ton of libs out there now that are simple Clojure wrappers around most common things. Really, to get started with Clojure, all you need to do is install Leiningen (https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen) and type "lein repl" in a terminal window. No ant, wars, or jvm's to think about :)