And my.variable sounds Perlish.

That's because Perl was intended (Larry Wall was trained as a Linguist) to somewhat mimic natural English.

That's a fascinating tidbit. You wouldn't exactly guess it from reading Perl.

>Larry Wall was trained as a Linguist

Having an undergraduate degree doesn't make somebody a linguist. Let me know when he has contributed to the field through scholarly work. Doing Bible translations doesn't count.

> me.variable sounds Irish to me

Only if you're used to the derogatory, clichéd "American TV" version of Irish.