I'm using it with Scala. My understanding is that Play can be used without writing any Scala whatsoever. That said, you can start with Scala as "better Java"

I'm using it with Scala. My understanding is that Play can be used without writing any Scala whatsoever. That said, you can start with Scala as "better Java" and ramp up to its advanced features. That's how I began. At first you're just replacing for-loops with map/reduce, eventually you'll start passing around implicit variables and using for-comprehensions all over the place.