Well, the similarity is for the basis of the language, not the little things. The prefixes are just to represent the scopes. The % is to identify the local scope of a function, and $ being a global.
The nickname to those who mod is "Tribes++" as it is a mix of a lot of languages. The C++ shorthand ($var++, $var+=, $var--, etc) as well as other c++ shorthand is accepted. The language isnt type specific so %a could be 5.0 one minutes, "a string" the next, then back to 4. Just a very lost, but very easily worked, language >:D
