R (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language) ) is kind of the successof of S. In certain communities (not only statistics, but for instance also biogenetics), there is quite some concurrency between R and (scientific) Python for data science.

For my understanding, the numpy syntax most closely resembles what would be possible in matlab. And matlab again seems to have roots from Fortran. Thanks to that, young folks nowadays can switch so easily between Fortran and Numpy, the syntax and call structures can easily be made to almost fit to each other.