Have you read a hospital chart carefully?

[Mairead]

60. That's not really a slur, it's a phonetic representation of pronunciation

Japanese speakers don't distinguish between R and L, just as Chinese doesn't have separate pronouns for "he" and "she". And we don't encode word-meaning in our tone use. So hilarity --we can hope it's good-natured hilarity-- is bound to ensue.

I smile at the "Engrish" mistakes, but in sympathy. I can just imagine a native speaker's reaction to the mistakes I make when I translate into some language in which I'm not completely at home and don't have a proper dictionary at hand. (I did that the other day here, in fact. I used a word that translates correctly, but is nevertheless the wrong word. Any native speaker doubtless had a good chuckle at my expense)