The Asean nations are characterised by an immense diversity and richness of languages and cultural traditions. In addition to their unique official languages and scripts, and now their common use of English, many hundreds of ethnic languages are spoken across the 10 countries. In the Philippines, and most recently in Myanmar, a mature and progressive attitude of balanced multilingualism is being felt in policy.

Patrick Chew felt devastated at his grandmother's funeral 27 years ago because he had never learned her mother tongue, Toisanese, a dialect in southern China. Today Chew, 44, uses two to 10 languages every day as the international-community manager for Change.org, a website that conducts online advocacy campaigns in 196 countries. Before that, he traced the source of spam in 33 languages at a network-security firm in San Bruno, Calif.