IIRC OpenDylan maintainer expressed regrets about the syntas a few times. An historical burden from some Apple decisions long ago.
Dylan was supposed to be used for Apple's Newton handheld, but was too late and basically died in the 1990s. I'm no expert, but I recall it was basically a dumbed down Lisp with OO extensions and module support that was changed to a dumbed down Algol with OO extensions and module support.
It was basically an infix lisp with focus on hygiene (because it was basically a Lisp 1), and the possibility of sealing modules (making it impossible to alter / inherit from them ).
This IIRC; it's a long time ago...