Well indeed, which is why I don't really like talking about the "speed" of a language at all. What really matters is the characteristics of the idiomatic usage.
But, yes, terms like "the speed of C" do not seem especially useful.
Even "equal effort" ignores the complexity of the effort-to-benefit function as well as maintainability issues and other considerations like finding good programmers who want to use the language.
Reality seems to be very complex.