What you describe may apply more to writing code, rather than reading code. Of course, knowing syntax is not sufficient for programming, but if you want just to review existing code, (unfamiliar) syntax may be an obstacle to non-programmer domain experts.

I've read something along these lines about the choice of OCaml at Jane Street, where they argued that their investor-types are able to proof-read new code, despite not being programmers, because the language "reads like english", similar to SQL or COBOL.