The definition of standard ML

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Where is a good place to get started with studying formal semantics? I've tried to follow chapters about formal semantics in LiSP, TAPL, CTM, and _The Definition of Standard ML_ with varying degrees of success (the material in TDoSML was beyond me), but I'm not sure where to start . I know part of the issue is getting familiar with the dense notation. I'm gradually getting an intuition for the stuff, but reading the right book would go a long way. I've wondered if this is one of the things I missed by being self-taught, but I don't think most programmers working in (say) Java or Python could really follow it either.

…irness, the language about type systems is often impenetrably mathematical, so I'm not surprised that the parallel isn't clear. (I really like OCaml, so I tried reading _The Definition of Standard ML_ to get a better understanding of the language family. Wham, brick wall. Then again, I'm not a mathematics grad student...I studied history.) * Which is just a different way of communicating semantic constraints ("this is never null", "this list always has at least two unique UTF-8 string values", "this can only be used on writable files", etc.) to the language and having them automatically checked.

…; There are many features ML has that programmers would find tremendously useful, except they're usually discussed using Greek letters, which is insular. I got a copy of The Definition of Standard ML from Amazon, hoping to get further insight into the language's design, and found it completely impenetrable. (Then again, I'm not a grad student.) Newer languages seem to be using type inference (finally!), but as far as I know, nobody has really ran with the design of its module system.