You say toe-mah-toe

Dear Misguided British Friend (you know who you are). Please note the following tips for improving (that's right.....I said IMPROVING) your English. 1) Mall is pronounced just as it looks. It does not rhyme with OWL. It rhymes with wall (note how they are spelled the same too--that should have been a good clue) 2) No pudding should ever be black (unless it is made with dark chocolate). 3) No food should ever have the word "blood" in it. Even sausage. 4) Yes, you can shut off the lights. 5) aluminum. let's not even go there. 6) adjust your syllable stress when saying Renaissance, controversy, and advertisement. (it sounds ridiculous otherwise). 7) jelly is jelly ---as in jam or preserves. Jello is not jelly---it is Jello (seems self-explanatory--I don't know why you don't get this) 8) we say toe-may-toe and not toe-mah-toe because we are right. think about it ....how do you pronounce potato? (surely you don't say poe-tah-toe). 9) and lastly (listen-up---this is important)....if you want me to pull out my best shot--I will. but it's not pretty. (you certainly don't want the world to know about your ever-so-rudely named "Spastic Society"). ..... So--study hard and someday maybe you too can comfortably use words such as elevator, blacktop, eraser, sweater, gotten, hickey, shopping cart, cotton candy, howdy, drugstore, flashlight, Popsicle, kitty-corner, and s'mores---to name a few. (it's ok---if you have to, you may look some of them up). I would have posted this on your page instead of mine. but I decided to save you the humiliation of having all your Brit-friends reading it. You would never live it down. (although they may be impressed that you actually managed to get an American girl to talk to you)