[jollybean]

I'm doubtful that 'reads like English' is 'expressiveness' because language is nuanced and imprecise.

That's not what we want in a software language.

In fact, we should not even call them 'languages'.

If by accident of history we called it 'Machine Instructions' - would anyone have ever tried to make it seem like Enligsh?

Clear, concise, unambiguous is I think what we want. Just enough overhead to keep it clear but not so little that it's ambiguous.