I first got interested in Erlang because of its Prolog-like syntax. I was a little bit disappointed when I realised it doesn't actually use unification. That would have been a great feature- why was it left out of the language, I wonder?
I agree though that unification is cool. And I still like Prolog and other logic languages, and have implemented Prolog in Erlang, of course.
We also gave some thought to laziness but felt it just didn't fit as for the type problems in which we were interested. For those problems when things are done is critical, not just that they are eventually done. That would have meant a lot explicit evaluation which defeated the point of laziness.
Of course, Python followed the same strange ideas, so I guess they're well-ingrained now.
Also, if you again look seriously at the syntax you will see there is actually very little Prolog in it, most of that disappeared along the way when it became functional. What is left are variables, atoms and lists. Records are a bit messy although they are very logical and consistent (again) but no one has come up with an alternative that works. They also fit the language semantics.
Also I personally don't see the problem with learning another syntax. I know and have used about 9-10 so far so what is really the problem?
And I rather like Prolog syntax, it simple, concise, consistent and truly homoiconic though with operators.