Here's another interesting document about the development of applescript as an evolution of hypercard/hypertalk: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2006/ashopl.pdf

For example, applescript was originally designed to support multiple dialects, including Japanese and French, but also a 'Professional' syntax dialect:

English: the first character of every word whose style is bold

French: le premier caractere de tous les mots dont style est gras

Professional: { words | style == bold }.character[1]