> It also makes PHP statically typed.

I disagree. PHP finds this perfectly acceptable:

    class Foo {}
    class Bar {}
    function foo(Foo $x) {}
    function bar(Bar $x) { foo($x); }

PHP is clearly checking types (actually, class tags) at runtime, every time a function/method is called. That's dynamic typing, not static typing.

Crucially, static types can be erased before execution without affecting the behaviour of a program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_erasure