Tim Bray on ruby:

He didn’t bother to tell me what it does, and remember, I only really started looking at Ruby last week, but it’s obvious

A parable: I recently returned from vacationing in Italy. I don't speak a word of Italian, but I was pretty much able to read all the signs (All 10$ words come from latin. I like 10$ words). I still don't speak a word of Italian.
Tim Bray's example reminds a little of this. I know and use a multitude of languages and I realize ruby isn't far from some of them. The example Bray quotes is really easy to make out. But it's almost as if the proximity of ruby to e.g. perl is working against me, for much the same reason I never bothered to learn proper Swedish.