To be fair, Erlang actually has much less syntax than any other language I've seriously used. It's just not C-like, for historical reasons. It's remarkably terse, but readable (after learning the basics), which is quite interesting.

I suggest flicking through Learn You Some Erlang[0] to understand some of it... don't skip the chapters on OTP, which is pretty much necessary to understand how an Erlang program is organised.

[0] http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content