Mute point, indeed: How mishearing leads to misuse

Anyone who has tried to learn a second language can appreciate the continual challenge that English poses to the non-native speaker. It has more twists and turns than a small intestine, with thousands of rules and hundreds of exceptions to those rules.

As if it’s not difficult enough to master in writing, English contains a slew of words that aren’t necessarily a problem in written form; it’s when they’re spoken—by some native speakers, mind you—that they are transformed into something else altogether. And English, it ain’t.