All useful languages have monads. It's a pattern that is nearly impossible to avoid. Where Haskell is different than most languages is that it lets you write generic code that operates on any monad.
"All useful languages have monads ... nearly impossible to avoid."
So here's a post on Python (hopefully useful) and monads, it appears to be implementing a pattern, although I don't think I would have ever stumbled across it naturally.
http://www.valuedlessons.com/2008/01/monads-in-python-with-n...
And here's a library implementing monads and other stuff:
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyMonad/
It still looks like I'm going to have to try using them before I can figure out if it's worth trying to use them.
For instance in C#, there is a monad with bind=?? and return=no-op (similar in use to the Maybe monad in Haskell). There's another monad with bind=; and return=no-op (similar in use to the IO monad in Haskell). C# just doesn't explicitly recognize those as monads.
I think mode C# programmers would likely think of ';' and '??' as syntax, and who is thinking of 'no-op' as anything!?
But if you were in haskell this would not be syntax, but just functions on an instance of the Monad type class.
Haskell could easily add some sugar to make these constructs syntax as well, but it would just be sugar -- and that is where the power, and confusion I think arises when most programmers think about monads.