Because php ends up combining the API consistency of C with the syntactic elegance of visual basic. I say this as someone who programs php professionally, the fact that they still haven't provided a complete set of OO api's very much speaks against the language stewards. PHP could have a sane subset, like javascript, but because there are gaps in the API (like the string and array API's, which are horrible) you can't get a sane subset without adding some extra API wrappers of your own.

And that's why it's impossible to build frameworkless PHP code that is elegant, something that even the designed-in-10-days javascript lets you do.

Still, i like php for its getting things done mentality. What it lacks in elegance it makes up for in productivity.