Comparing SQL to those other languages doesn't really make sense. Their purpose is different. For what SQL does, the syntax makes a lot of sense because it is a completely different paradigm. I think it's dismissive to refer to SQL as merely a 70s experiment. It is used so widely today still
I think SQL is amazing. There are few technologies within IT that has held up as well as it has. Skills you could gave learned 40 years ago still useful today. I think learning SQL well is one of the best investments you can do in yourself.
Shorter? No use of modifier keys? Just to name two. I think to do a meaningful comparison, more complex expressions should be used, that include joins, group by, order by etc...
There is pretty overwhelming evidence that using modifier keys is an advantage in this sort of thing. Pretty much every other language - possibly all of them - in common use make heavy use of modifier keys in describing what a computer should be doing. SQL is pretty much the dying breath of the attempts to do without them because the syntax is so bad in practice. Even configuration files typically make use of modifier keys.
Losing the explicit link between a function and its arguments is a big deal. Note that even the relational algebra model behind SQL doesn't try to make that sort of silly trade off.
The first statement is pretty close to a sentence in English. A non-programmer is somewhat likely to understand what the first statement means, but is not likely to understand the second without training.
