QML is a declarative language; it has curly braces like JS, but that's about it. It also allows you to extend it with (some old, possibly noncompliant version of) JS, but the declarative markup is a distinct language.

That's like saying every YAML or JSON dialect is a new language. Sure, but not a full-fledged "programming language". QML is quite nice to work with, and well suited to the problem at hand.

Granted, it's not a general purpose programming language, but it has a comparable learning curve. Certainy many times steeper than YAML or JSON or other markup languages.