it actually isn’t; the subject is language, which is singular here, but it has several adjectives, which doesn’t make it plural in itself
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I think it is a bit more complicated than that, these adjectives are not additive (like a lumpy green and spotted chair), they designate separate entities.
I would agree with @sonchro that whether or not it is plural is going to depend on author connotation.
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harith, you’re twisting my words, here. I did not say that “the subject of the verb is, ‘plural,’” and in fact I agree that the subject of the verb is, “language(s).” However, this strange construction, using a conjunction of adjectives, has rendered the subject iirevocably plural. Even if the word used is, “language,” we are still talking about more than one distinct type of language.
hivefleetbothan is right when they say that the adjectives are not additive; “spoken,” and, “written,” are two different types of language(s).
While this is all quite a fun conundrum to explore, I would suggest that the original author could save a lot of time by simply lumping, “spoken and written,” together as, “verbal.” (Fun fact: the last place I worked, a lot of people would use, “verbal,” to denote only written language. Apparently for them, speech is a form of nonverbal communication. 
When I called them out, and said, “Verbal simply means communicating with words, as we’re doing now with our voices,” they became flummoxed and said, “Huh! Huff! Well, you know what I mean!”)
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As someone who works as a professional translator and interpreter, this thread is starting to turn into a personal hell of mine.
So I’ll just leave this particular thread alone and never look back ever again.
Au revoir. 
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Aww, don’t leave, I’d be really quite interested in hearing your take on it.
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I certainly didn’t mean to twist your words, and I see where you’re coming from, but as far as I’m concerned there’s absolutely no reason why “spoken and written language” could not be a singular entity here; I would in fact argue that it is definitely a singular entity and cannot but be singular unless it is made plural, by making it “spoken and written languages,” but then we will no longer be talking about the same entity and will be talking about different languages altogether.
For myself, I conclude that both options are possible, but in this case, and upon going back to what @Fraggles was originally arguing, I will admit that I now believe that it should be plural, as I now see that he was obviously alluding to the difference between ‘spoken’ and ‘written’ language
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iam rly impressed how long this thread is 
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It gets necroed every once in a while and seems to keep getting likes on the original post for some reason, I guess new people on the site want to look up if getting likes gets you coins.
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