A Lisp family language is hardly more approachable than Scala. I found Java -> Scala pretty smooth, but can't make head or tail of Clojure code as it looks completely different to languages I've used before.
Interesting perspective, thanks. I suspect it depends on whether you're more used to langs like Ruby, Python, JavaScript (which are more like Clojure) or Java (which is more like Scala). Coming from Python and JavaScript, and with minimal Java experience, I find Clojure more approachable... but then, Java-style OO is utterly vexing to me.