Jean Yang brings an interesting perspective on why one might want to learn Scala:
Scala is also relatively easy to learn, especially compared to other strongly statically typed languages (OCaml; Haskell). I have previously said that Python is the most marketable language for beginners, but I am beginning to change my mind. Like Python, Scala has clean syntax, nice libraries, good online documentation, and lots of people in industry using it. Unlike Python, Scala also has a static type system that can prevent you from doing bad things (whereas in Python the bad things just happen when you run the program).
You could say I’m somewhat biased towards PhDs and MIT folksen though, as they do tend to take their programming languages seriously.
Cribbed from the TypeSafe Blog.