Pharen (http://scriptor.github.com/pharen/ http://scriptor.github.com/pharen/), a Lisp that compiles to PHP, might be or become such a language. It's not quite

Pharen (http://scriptor.github.com/pharen/ http://scriptor.github.com/pharen/), a Lisp that compiles to PHP, might be or become such a language. It's not quite as simple to jump right into as PHP is because you need to run Pharen's compiler after editing your code, or set up a script to watch for changes and then compile. But Pharen could theoretically improve its tooling and get very close to PHP's ease of use.