Ironically these features make Perl feel very far from natural language, much moreso than other programming languages, even some symbol-heavy ones like Java. It

Ironically these features make Perl feel very far from natural language, much moreso than other programming languages, even some symbol-heavy ones like Java. It feels more like IPA pronunciation notation than anything naturally derived. Raku I can't speak for because I haven't used it beyond "hello world", but it has a huge pile of symbolic infix operators in the standard library and that makes me squirm, because it's probably my most-disliked Haskell feature and IMO a substantial design mistake.