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birb_cromble  1d ago (text post)   374 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2027-06-27

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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How do you get around the language barrier? Did you learn the language, or do you stick to areas where English is common?

Malaysia and Singapore are essentially English-speaking countries, especially if you stick to the places (Kuala Lumpur/Selangor, Penang, Ipoh, Melaka, Johor Bahru, Kota Kinabalu) that any tourist or Expat realistically is going to.

From my experiences in Asia I'd say that Singapore, Malaysia, Bali (Rest of Indonesia not so much) and Phillippines you can easily get by with only English. Thailand has a shocking drop off when you stray away from tourism professionals, which has always shocked and confused me considering how big Tourism is as an industry. Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan more of a struggle when you go off the beaten path. Paradoxically I do find China one of the easier ones to navigate after comprehending their phone-app system since you can do tons without actually talking to people + their native translation apps are very good.

In big metros and in the population under 40 years old English is prettymuch universal in Malaysia. Fluent, first/second language level.

I've picked up 3.5/10 Mandarin (since my wife is Malaysian Chinese) and like 2.5/10 Bahasa Malay (Considerably easier to learn than Mandarin but I really don't have many opportunities to actually use it) over the course of a year and a half here, but aside from elderly family members of my wife and my nanny essentially everybody else I interact with has 7+/10 English

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