A lot of older chinese never have a chance to get educated. They forced to work as a kuli at 11-13 years old. Since their job not required to read write and speak, they eventually become what you met that day. I still met 4-5 people like that during 1990 in my home town (they are in their 30-40's at that moment).

this is typical for ppl who lives in rumah panjang their whole entire life. close community, minimal interaction with outsiders, understandable la. i oso met a few before.
but how he deal with JPN, JPJ, or any govt body, bring translator everywhere?
so no driving license? correct me if im wrong, JPJ test only conducted in Malay, rite?

The dark side of the community you never know. Actually a lot of people thinking chinese is very wealthy which was not right. There are many of them poorer than the average poor Malays or Indians. This type of unker is very common. Those I met were work with kedai runcit cina or house builder assistance. For the whole day they only need to listen to the instructions given by the boss or supervisor. They don't need to interact with customer nor writing a reports. They bring their own cook food and water to work strictly no teh tarik session. Teh tarik is kind of luxury and if the boss belanja them to drink, they are willing to work harder, faster even overtime also no problem. Their life is just work-sleep-work, rest only 1-2 days in a month. They sacrificed themselves and all the money saved for their children's education. The younger generation of chinese community mostly don't know about this.

Believe it or not there are actually some similiarities with Indian languages and Malay language.

This is because Malay took influence from Sanskrit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_loanwords_in_Malay

Look at the amount of words from Sanskrit, Hindi and Tamil.

That is a good reason why Bangla or anyone with familiarity with Indian language picks up Malay easier than Chinese.

Also long time ago I had a neighbour, cina miskin, i think 60+ years old. He work odd jobs daily naik basikal while collecting recycleable trash. No wife, only 1 son who work graveyard shift living with him. Unker always ask me or other neighbors to read letters for him because he is illiterate.

But surprise surprise, his BM is not bad at all.

My point is the similarities between Indian languages and Malay language. The more similar it is, the easier to learn it.

Another example is both are agglutinative languages where as Chinese isn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language

How much have you learn Chinese/Tamil?

bangla not bengali meh?

No need to take classes, our myanmar worker can speak fluent cainis from just selling tv boxes and its gadgets, his celery + comission is RM3800 and it has been consistent. No attend classes nothing. He also speaks merei, engrand and his own burmese. Depends on how motivated you are lorrrrrrrrrrrr. When this foreigner can do this effortlessly suddenly it makes pipu in meresie looks bad, now i oso learn his language sometimes troll with him and his fren, so much fun.