From Imagined Communities:
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 languages is their capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities. (133)
But also:
If every language is acquirable, its acquisition requires a real portion of a person’s life: each new conquest is measured against shortening days. What limits one’s access to other language is not their imperviousness but one’s own mortality. Hence a certain privacy to all languages. (148)