Please take this in good humour but I couldn't resist:
> All you have to do is get over named parameters, square bracket message passing, and overall verbosity
Translation: "All you have to do is get over it's poor readability and it's quite readable!"
> Objective-C is remarkably similar to Java and other OOP languages.
Translation: "Objective-C is as readable as several other unreadable languages".
;-)
Readability isn't about familiarity as much as it's about clarity and a lack of boilerplate. Verbosity is in most cases the antithesis if readability. I think there can be exceptions (maybe some verbose DSLs that manage to map cleanly from your brain to the code on the page) but if the verbosity comes from boilerplate or visual clutter then verbosity is a strong point against.