Nice to see that learning a 'crappy' language like PHP got you on to a more even keel in that respect.
A language snob is someone who derives a feeling of superiority from the language they use, in reality the tools matter a lot less than language snobs will have you believe.
I've worked with lots of people over the years, and some of them were all-out snobs about 'their' chosen language.
These people were extremely irritating to work with because they refused to look past the minimal advantage that you derive from working in language a,b or c.
The stuff most of us create could be implemented in just about any language without anything close to the kind of 'slowing down' that you allude to, it all boils down to how well you know your language and the environment you operate in, as well as knowledge about the domain you are building your work for.
In my experience the choice of language has a relatively small impact on the speed of the initial build and the quality of that build.
Over a longer term for less than rocket science style projects it is far more important to have good documentation and a supply of reasonably competent coders than that it is important to do your project in any one specific language.
Of course, there are languages such as brainfuck and a bunch of others that you'd do well to avoid for many reasons but I take it we're limiting the discussion to the top 10 languages used to build everyday applications and web-apps, say Java, C++, Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, C# and whichever won't spring to mind at the moment.
It can be difficult to tell them apart. But one way is to look at the depth of their criticisms, and how many of those criticisms you've heard before. If they say the same things everyone else says, chances are they're talking out of their ass. But if they can come up with unique, detailed, insightful reasons why a particular language sucks, it's pretty likely that they've used it extensively and have some idea what they're talking about.
And yet, for my own anecdote, at the start of the summer I got a job where the main part of my work is creating a Flex front-end application with Java services running on Tomcat/Jetty for the backend, using SOAP (though we do have REST hooks too generated automatically) as a data transfer protocol. It's kind of ugly at first, since hey, it's Java, but really it's not bad and my "I wish this was PHP/Python" moments grow more and more infrequent.
That said, there's nothing wrong with programmers being picky about languages. Not only are languages what we're forced to think in day in and day out, but they affect what tools we can use, how we structure our code, and (like it or not) what jobs we can easily get.
So no, I'd disagree with your definition of 'snob'.
"a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field: a musical snob."
Regardless, if avoiding languages I consider inferior make me a snob then I'm happy to proclaim myself a snob.
All it has going for it is that it has low barrier to entry and is a commodity in terms of it's developer and low-end hosting. I consider these as good selling points for PHP but that is all I think it has going for it.
I think the social ecosystem of a language is very important, and I think there's more information and quality libraries in Ruby at the moment, so the popularity vote for PHP is a bit moot nowadays for web application development.
I try not to be a snob, I try to use 'the best tool for the job' but I don't think PHP is a very good tool. And I'm sorry but as someone who uses these tools all day I do not consider it a good tool.
The argument that language choice doesn't matter, it's the engineer that matters, is very valid. I'm an excellent engineer in both and produce high quality working code in both. But python is clearer, more fun, and right.
That was my point actually. :-)
Just because you don't want to use PHP doesn't make you a snob.
PHP does have problems, but it's easy to pick up. I don't know that learning it will make you a better programmer, but a good programmer can definitely make it solve problems efficiently enough.
Try picking one that is as far as possible from the ones you know and then try building something useful in it. That's the fastest way to broaden your horizons.