Originally Posted by
joejones
2) If I saw someone babbling to themselves out loud in broken Japanese in the middle of the street, I would probably also assume that they had a mental problem.
It sounded more funny than anything, actually. In fact, I recall a Seinfeld episode where Kramer was shot up with Novocaine at the dentist and then met a lady on the street who assumed that he was disabled because he couldn't speak properly...
OTOH, here in the UK, a family friend suffered a stroke and managed to get himself to the emergency room of a hospital. Despite being fully aware of what was being said, he wasn't able to voice his answers to any questions. Rather than assuming that there was a problem in his brain (which there was), the people on duty got it into their heads that he was a foreigner and ran around to find people who asked him the same questions in a bunch of different languages - ending up with "Do you speak Urdu?" (which you would agree is most unlikely, if you could see him) - until someone finally twigged what was up. In retrospect it's quite funny. He's doing fine now.