If you'd chosen $ it'd almost be PHP (except for the arrows).

$foo = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
print $foo->[2];
[download]

(UPDATE: Heh, just realized that by using $ you avoid the need for symrefs :-D Of course tha means no & on subroutine calls)

You might like English::Reference (spurred by the perl6 Highlander RFC discussion [mail-archive.com]).

--
perl -pew "s/\b;([mnst])/'$1/g"