You say to-may-to, I say tomate.

A shoe that suites me? Accounting Principals? What's next? Price instead of prize? Military status instead of marital status (a real life example on a CV submitted by a job applicant to my father when he was still working in Ranhill)? I don't speak England?

And yes, I do blame it all on the fact that I've been writing in French for far too long.

As a matter of fact, come to think of it, I've been facing this problem since I was in Colmar. I remember reading an English book when I came across the word 'avoid'. Instead of pronouncing it (silently of course) as a-voy-d, it came to me as a-vwa-d since the 'oi' diphthong sounds 'wa' in French.

Even now, when I read a word like say, adviser, I would pronounce it as ad-vee-zay first in my head before correcting myself to ad-vy-zer although the former makes no sense at all neither in English nor French (nor Javanese may I add).

English written tests proved to be a nightmare. I always find myself writing exemple instead of example, adresse instead of address, système instead of system etc. I have this habit of writing the accent in words like employée instead of employee, or like détermine instead of determine. But my biggest problem is when I write 'and' or 'or'. Since I had to write in English, my train of thoughts was in English. So those two words were in English when it first came to my head, but as they traveled down my central nervous system from my God knows where (medula oblongata or cerebrum or cerebellum or whatever) to my fingers, they got lost in translation and they always came out as 'et' or 'ou'.

Some may say 'eleh poyo lah budak ni. Baru 4 tahun duduk kat France dah bising speaking Paris'.

More often than not, I also find myself stopping abruptly in the middle of a sentence in a conversation, be it in English or Malay, looking for the word in either of the languages, especially everyday phrases.

Examples:

"Tout... sekarang jugak" (tout de suite)
"Sta... internship/practical" (stage)
"...qua... but still" (quand même)
"Pu... Bengong" (Pu... hanya budak tau French je boleh agak. Usually when the car in front (normally driven by a lady, or a guy with lady-like traits, according to my brother), does not give any turning signal (is that the word because I have the word 'clignotant' flashing in my head.)

So forgive me if I make any mistakes writing or speaking England.