FWIW I'm working on a bash-compatible shell:

http://www.oilshell.org/blog/

If nothing else, I have thousands of lines of my own shell scripts that I don't care to move to a different shell syntax that's not obviously better :)

I'm designing a new shell language which bash can be auto-converted to. This is a lot of work and the plans might change, but the beginnings of it are here:

http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/02/05.html

http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/02/06.html