One of the weirdest things about this sort of statement is the persistent belief (yes, I've seen it on numerous occasions) that most languages have been consciously "created" by planning or by conscious change of another language. This idea is much more common than you'd think.
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Unless he means *divine* creation, because, oh well, then we're really not in Kansas anymore.
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Anyway, I mean, there are obviously planned languages, consciously constructed standards of dialect continua, etc. But that's obviously not what was intended here.
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@OlaWikander
I think it is less about when the language was created, and more to do with when did the group speaking a certain language formed a distinct identity and sufficient library to gain a shared cultural conscious that includes the language as one of its pillars.
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@OlaWikander
Yes, and then there are the people who think that *their* variety of speech is unplanned and natural, but all others are purposeful deviations from this form of speech. I find this especially often in British comments about American English.
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@OlaWikander
Related to this: language X is not a real language but just a distorted "dialect" of Y, "invented" by pro-X and anti-Y activists for political reasons.
(As in the Putinist narrative about Ukrainian. Or in this debate on Kven: .)
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