[microtonal]

This discussion is derailing. From the top-level comment:

Hopefully it would allow everyone to realize that a language is just some syntax and semantic and that a compiler is just a program like another.

Which is true. However, this glosses over the fact that it is prohibitively hard to write efficient compilers for some languages. For instance, Prolog's semantics are so far removed from our machines that it is terribly hard to make it efficient for general purpose programs.

Semantics do make some languages harder to compile to efficient machine code than others.