After working for on JAVA for a long time now i feel like also learn some other language just for a change. This time i want to spend some time learning and reading one of the dynamic languages. Which is the most appropriate one that covers most of the features offered by dynamic languages and the syntax which probably is fun and also one that is closer to the syntax used by most of the dynamic languages.
BR, Keshav
Since you have a Java background, Groovy might be worth a shot.
It's a lot of fun :)
You may want to start with Groovy (http://groovy.codehaus.org/), as that is a language that is close to Java, so you can use what you know, but then start to gain experience to using functions as first-class objects, for example.
Then, once you understand Groovy then you can start to experiment with Ruby and Python.
Ahah, nice troll :) (with ruby and python tags).
In my humble opinion, after trying many languages, my favorite is Ruby with Ruby on Rails.
Learn [one of] these:
Don't transition via a semi-dynamic, semi-Java language. Just jump in and try a dynamic language. In order to really understand what else is going on, you have to get out of the Java world by jumping in, not by sticking your toes into the water.
Yes, I know Clojure is on the JVM and that Ruby and Python have implementations on the JVM as well. But the runtime implementation of a language does not define the language. Learn the language, and you can pick a favorite runtime.
Javascript is by far the most useful of dynamic languages for real-world practical work - not only is it irreplaceable for "client-side" work on the user's browser, but Node.js is rapidly making it very interesting for server-side work, too. Sure, it has many issues, but a book such as Crockford's Javascript: the good parts will help you avoid many of them.
JS's syntax of course is quite different from that of dynamic languages such as Python or Ruby, which try to avoid braces and semicolons (which you'd better not avoid in JS: it tries to guess on your behalf but too often it guesses wrong!-). There is really no "syntax used by most of the dynamic languages" given these huge syntax differences (which grow if you throw into the mix Scheme, Erlang, Perl, PHP, Tcl, ...), so that part of your specs is moot.
Second most useful today is probably Python -- as Allison Randall (program chair of OSCON and a well-known Perl guru) put it, Python has surprisingly become something of a "default language" in many fields. For example, the SEC is considering a regulation to mandate publication of algorithms used in stock trading, and their initially proposed language for such a publication is "of course" Python. As this post explains,
Why Python? The SEC actually asks for comments on whether they should mandate Perl, Java or something else instead. I use Perl quite extensively, but the idea that Perl is a suitable language for implementing a transparency requirement is laughable. Perl is a model of powerful but unreadable and cryptic code. As for Java and C-Sharp, there is little point in having open source code if the interpreter is not also open source. I do not use Python myself, but it appears to be a good choice for the task at hand.
This is what Allison meant by "default language", I think: not necessarily the one you'll choose to implement a given task (e.g. the above post's author would prefer using Perl), but a language everybody's supposed to be able to read in order to understand an algorithm that is published or otherwise presented -- as Bruce Eckel (deservedly-best-selling author of books on C++ and Java) puts it here,
Python is executable pseudocode.
You can look at the "executable" part as a bonus (it does guarantee lack of ambiguity, which non-executable pseudocode might lack;-) even though large systems such as reddit and youtube have been implemented in it.
At the other extreme, if you're not necessarily looking for immediately useful knowledge, but for mind-broadening, Scheme or Erlang might suit you best (but the syntax in each case is quite different from most other languages, be warned;-).
However, in that case, I'd suggest Mozart, to go with the masterpiece that is Van Roy's and Haridi's Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming (that book is plenty motivation to learn Mozart, just like SICP is to learn Scheme -- indeed, I've described CTMCP as "SICP for the 21st century"!-).