Question: There is a scripting language made for Windows called AutoIt. It can do things like, for example, if a user highlights a word and presses a certain hotkey, it can copy that word into memory, open up firefox, go to google.com, paste the word into the text box, and click the button to search.

What are some of the easiest scripting languages in Linux to learn that can do this?

Answer: 
I can personally recommend [Sikuli](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli/), a Python-based GUI automator with a slick IDE. You might also want to look into [GNU Xnee](http://www.gnu.org/software/xnee/).
AutoHotkey has been ported to .NET with [IronAHK](http://code.google.com/p/ironahk/) so it can run on Linux. Haven't tried it on Linux though.