It's verbose for sure (though Pascal's overall amount of boileplate probably takes less space compared to Java code). Structurally it's almost the same beast (both inherited from Algol), with notable exceptions like for loop.

Scala feels more modern than C to me too, when talking about language concepts/features. Regarding syntax they are in the same basket.

More people are familiar with Pascal and its syntax so I understand why people discuss it so much but it was succeeded by Modula-2, Ada, and Oberon which have better syntax.

One thing that is better about the syntax that I really like is the removal of BEGIN and END everywhere except around code in MODULEs and PROCEDUREs. IF/THEN/ELSE/END, FOR/DO/END, REPEAT/UNTIL, WHILE/DO/END, CASE/ELSE/END, no longer have BEGIN/END, even if there are multiple statements in them. This makes the code less verbose than C and C++ and equally or more compact vertically than them, depending on whether you put your braces on separate lines.