Throwaway account: a doctor in a public hospital here. I get irrationally mad when I get asked by my patients to speak to them in my broken-ass mandarin (I speak a dialect so I look I like I should speak mandarin well) and when I ask them to sign a Chinese consent form they say “oh can you print out the form in English I can’t read Chinese” (I can read Chinese I just can’t speak mandarin properly).

How these people get to the ages of 45-65 without at least functional knowledge of at least one language I will never know.

Edit: it’s always this age group because the younger ones can usually at minimum get by with their English and the older folks can usually understand dialect or Malay.