Python, search engine and NLP...

[Shagshag]

Hello, 

I'm interested in Pyhon but not sure it can fit my needs :

I have a huge search engine to write with many XML input/output, it
must be able to index and process something like 3 GO of data, many
text files, parse text and other natural language processing, not be
too slow, and so on...

- Do you think Python can help me ???

- As by now i don't know Python, do you think that it will not be a
waste of time even if I had to learn it ???

- Do you know about some Python's natural language processing module
???

- No, as there are many Java NLP library, I should definitively do it
with Java...

Thanks in advance,

S13.