Ceylon is very nice, and probably is more consistent; first-class union types are a really good idea. Its Java interop story isn't quite as good as Scala's (without existential types, you can't express many Java generic methods - and try calling a Java generic method with a Ceylon tuple), and I don't think I could live without higher-kinded types and some equivalent to for/yield (do notation). But it does feel pretty elegant so far; we'll see if it can keep it up through years of language evolution.

Java interop is way better with Ceylon 1.1. For example, use-site variance for generics was introduced and overloading bugs have been resolved. Ceylon 1.2 will have constructors (to support DI frameworks) and I believe Java EE integration. The Ceylon guys have been very careful about adding new features, considering the pros and cons. Strict Java interoperability would have resulted in a much less elegant language (ex public/protected/private instead of shared and allowing an escape hatch for null, as Swift and Kotlin have done).

Yeah, having looked at Ceylon 1.2 I withdraw the "or Ceylon" part of what I'd said above. It's a lot nicer than when I'd looked at it before. I'd still go to Scala first, but that ain't bad.