Toe-ma-toe or Toe-may-toe? Po-taa-to or Po-tae-to?

Whatever. I prefer, or rather have been used to saying Toe-may-toes. My Cambridge educated English teacher in primary schooling days has instilled strong pro-nun-ciation in most of the English words I use. Then, I did not fancy my English classes when my English teach made us make weird sounds to practice pronouncing words; like saying…wooo making a round ‘O’ with your lips to pronounce the word woman or making a small ‘o’ for the word police. Hearing her say ‘phonetics’ in school made me feel like Calvin when the planes go way above your head and one wonder what is happening there. Could not make much sense of much of the words she used. The Oxford English pocket dictionary that we had to compulsorily tag along to the English class, did not help. Two reasons, the spelling was wrong because of my misconstrued imitation of the word or the second – that my imagination took over and with time my laziness caught up too and did not open the small book in class.

Albuquerque, would surely have been Albuquer-queue if not for my teacher. E-co-noh-mic would be echo-nomic. The examples are ample. From my school days of wanting to skip the English class to being thankful for the wonderful strong basics. Thank you ma’am. Yes, many, if not all of them have remained in my head.


... and Anandh, this is for you ;)