Indeed, the brevity that comes from a glyph-oriented syntax is orthogonal to that which comes from having array-oriented semantics (e.g., making loops implicit)

Indeed, the brevity that comes from a glyph-oriented syntax is orthogonal to that which comes from having array-oriented semantics (e.g., making loops implicit). You could have a word-based syntax, and still have very concise code. q uses words for its single-argument operators, using "til 10" rather than "!10". It certainly makes a better first impression, but I'm not convinced it matters after a few days. My experience as an enthusiastic k novice is that I recognize idioms from symbols (e.g. "{x@<x}" more directly than I do in words ("fun x at grade-up x end"). Perhaps it's like reading poetry in Kanji, rather than letters?