Erlang is most definitely functional, although it's not as pure as something lik...

Erlang is most definitely functional, although it's not as pure as something like Haskell.

In terms of speed, this is something to look at:

It's pretty fast for most things if you use HiPE.

Your skepticism about Erlang is justified in terms of "next big language":

However, if you use it for what it was created for, it is very nice - it's the best thing out there.