It often takes a while for people to catch on to new things. Imagine if you had no C experience, and somebody showed you some C involving pointer manipulation. You'd probably have a bunch of questions. While a quick overview of Perl might be a good way to give folks a little taste, playing with Perl first hand is really what will get people used to the syntax, and really interested in it. The next time an opportunity to solve a problem that highlights Perl's strengths, show a co-worker, maybe they'll be intrigued enough to play around themselves.