There is at least one project that managed to take the Iverson ghost[1] from Numpy and actually implement a complete array language[2] on top of it, so there is no need to stray far away from Python's ecosystem.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42293723

[1] https://analyzethedatanotthedrivel.org/2018/03/31/numpy-anot...

[2] https://github.com/briangu/klongpy