Try arc, and if the languages confuses you, step down a bit to a language which is easier but somewhat less powerfull.
To me, that was ruby (I tried lisp about 4 years ago, but found it confusing still, and then went ruby, and now am back in a lisp), which is nearly a written language and might be one of the easiest ways to learn programming.
As to your question on popularity.. maybe only those people take up lisp (and the odd syntax) if they run into the limitations of less powerful programming languages. Most people might never run into the limitations or realize that they're limited, and keep on using whatever popular computer language they were using.
