[pjmlp]

For the majority of people without CS background Language == Implementation.

So if the reference implementation is a bare bones interpreter, even though there are JIT and AOT compilers tp choose from, they will say language X is interpreted.

Which in Python's case means many ignore the existence of PyPy, given that the language designers don't want to change the nature of CPython.

[tavert]

PyPy's adoption problem is not that it isn't the reference implementation. It's that it is incompatible with a huge body of Python modules that rely on C extensions. If you're going to lose access to libraries, may as well not make the same exact semantic decisions for a JIT-oriented language implementation that you made for an interpreted implementation.