It is always a mistake to treat languages in the way that certain nationalist ideologues treat them — as emblems of nation-ness, like flags, costumes, folk-dances, and the rest. Much the most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. (ISBN: 0860915468) p.135

[N]either economic interest, Liberalism, nor Enlightenment could, or did, create in themselves the kind, or shape, of imagined community to be defended from these regimes’ depredations; to put it another way, none provided the framework of a new consciousness — the scarcely-seen periphery of its vision — as opposed to centre-field objects of its admiration or disgust.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. (ISBN: 0860915468) p.65