Suggest a good programming language to learn that is not OOP and definitely not in C style syntax [closed]

If you don't mind leaving the crowded road of hype languages, you can try Postscript/PDF with its stack based programming paradigm.

Lisp, Prolog, Occam are other languages with more or less exotic paradigms.

APL is known for its unconventional character set.

All of these have at best a niche value on the market but they provide fresh air to the brain.

Clojure http://clojure.org/getting_started

Inform7 is the most awesome programming language ever. It is only useful for one thing -- writing text-based games -- but what it does, it does very well. Programming in Inform7 is unlike programming in any other language I've ever tried. A typical line of Inform7:

Before wearing something which is not carried by the player: if the noun is worn, 
continue the action; try taking the noun; if the player does not have the noun, 
stop the action.

This implements the logic that if the player tries to wear something that they are not carrying, they logically have to pick it up first. If picking up the object fails, (say, because it can be seen but not touched because the hat is inside the closed aquarium) they don't get to wear the object.

Or:

The initial appearance of a door is usually "Nearby [an item described] leads 
[item described direction]." The description of a door is usually 
"[if open]It stands open[otherwise]It is closed[end if][if locked] 
and locked[otherwise] and unlocked[end if]."

This logic says that when the player sees a door, it is first described as something like "A drawbridge leads north. It stands open."

There's always Forth, which isn't as high-profile/visible as it once was but is still very common in certain fields. It's certainly not C-like :)

Someone has already mentioned Lisp, but I'm going to suggest that Scheme may be a better choice for a Lisp-like language. It's been the language for lots of Computer Science programming courses for years, so there's a lot of tutorial material around for it.

You may also be interested in, or amused by, some of the (often charmingly-named) Esoteric Programming Languages

The book of Abelson / Sussman ("Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs") is the best book I know of to learn different programming paradigms. They use Scheme (an easy to learn Lisp dialect) throughout the book, which is definitely not "C-Style" or OOP. See here http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ for more information.

You find this book also on place 3 of this list:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read

My favorite functional programming language so far is ML. However, I'd only suggest it for purely academic learning about other syntax/functional programming languages; I seriously doubt you'll ever have a job that requires you to use ML.

As for multi-paradigm languages, one that's gaining popularity (but that I've never used personally) is Scala. You should be able to pick it up fairly quickly because it runs on the JVM, so your experience in Java will be a plus.

LISP, Haskell, Smalltalk (very different oo and even programming model, see this)

Man, SQL does not have C-like syntax, and is very useful compared to other "exotic" languages (why bother learning pdf language?)

Python. Python is a modern, practical, multi-paradigm programming language, dynamic and strongly typed. Python has a simple yet powerful syntax, combined with powerful libraries.

Like C++, Python has a powerful metaprogramming capability; but unlike C++, metaprogramming is done in Python, not as separate, cumbersome syntax like templates or macros.

Like Pascal, Python is easy to learn; but unlike Pascal, Python is not just a toy language.

Like Java, Python is strong on OOP; but unlike Java, Python doesn't come with the hefty, unnecessarily verbose syntax.

Like Bash/Perl, Python can be used to write quick scripts; but unlike Bash/Perl, Python can actually scale to larger program.

Python has strong facilities for functional programming (map, filter, reduce, composition, lambda, list comprehension, currying, lazy evaluation, etc), but does not restrict you to functional paradigm. You can freely mix and match paradigm as you see fit to solve a problem. And unlike many dedicated functional language, Python is actually used in the industry.

Best of all:

>>> from __future__ import braces
  File "<stdin>", line 1
SyntaxError: not a chance

Try Erlang, a very different paradigm and definitely not C-like syntax and semantics. A good on-line starting point is Learn You Some Erlang

Lambda calculus. I recently read An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus. It is amazing. I understand programming in a way I never have before (I've be programming for ~15 years). It will give you a solid handle on functional programming and give you a basis to learn any FP language.

The book starts with some very basic concepts, and builds a whole system of computation on top of them. It's a pretty quick read, too.

You already seem to have quite some programming experience. Grasping high level concepts about new languages shouldn't take you too long. I suggest just toying around with several in order to see whether there are any you find particularly interesting. You can still buy a book to learn it thoroughly afterwards.

I guess the best bet to pick languages which are useable in the industry is by going through some job offers and checking their requirements. This will also give you an overview whether the type of job where the language is used interests you.

Of course, a problem with this approach could be that mainstream jobs only offer jobs in OO languages, but hey, .. then at least you know. ;p

I think you might like Clojure, but as they say the paradigms is what matters here. Anyways, I think functional programming is quite trending by now, and it is to find it appealing.

Prolog was fun, though I didn't get to use it for very long. It is a "declarative" programming language, which basically means you tell it your problem and it works out how to solve it: the order of the statements is irrelevant...

In my Computer Science Degree (Portugal), Introduction to Programming was done using Scheme (LISP dialect).

I liked very much of it. You can tried. I think that is simpler than LISP, Dr. Scheme is a great IDE to help you to start with Scheme