The countries listed below make up the group known as the ASEAN countries.
This guide is designed to provide staff and students intending to visit any of these countries some basic language tips as well as information about the countries and their cultures.
The language tabs at the top of this page take you to a series of Audio -visual "phasebooks" on a variety of topics. This is by no means intended to teach the languages but provides you with some useful vocabulary and phrases and allows you to hear how they should be pronounced.
The short video phrasebooks are also supported by PDF versions and audio only files which can be downloaded.
Official language - Malay
Capital - Bandar Seri Begawan
Population - 400,000 (approx)
Government - Absolute Monarchy
Official language - English & Filipino (based on Tagalog)
Capital - Manila
Population - 101,000,000 (approx)
Government - Republic
Official language(s) - Malay, English, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil
Population - 5,000,000 (approx)
Government - Parliamentary Republic
Official language - Khmer
Capital - Phnom Penh
Population - 14, 500,000 (approx)
Government - Constitutional Monarchy under Multiparty Democracy
Official language - Malay. English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Thai are also spoken.
Capital - Kuala Lumpur
Population - 28,000,000 (approx)
Government - Constitutional Monarchy
Official language - Indonesian
Capital - Jakarta
Population - 245, 500,000 (approx)
Government - Republic
Official language - Myanmar
Capital - Naypyidaw
Population - 61,000,000 (approx)
Government - Unitary Presidential republic
Language - Thai
Capital - Bangkok
Population 66,000,000 (approx)
Government - Constitutional Monarchy
Official language - Lao
Capital - Vientiane
Population - 7,000,000 (approx)
Government - Communist state
Official language - Vietnamese
Capital - Hanoi
Population - 92,000,000 (approx)
Government - Socialist Republic