My father grew up in Italy in the 1930s. In those days it was not uncommon for people to be multilingual. When my father came to the United States in 1940 he spoke three languages fluently: Italian, the local dialect Piedmontese and French – and he read Greek and Latin. He always said English was the hardest language to learn because there are no rules. We have words with letters that are not pronounced – knight, gnu and government – words that are spelled the same way but pronounced differently – read and read – and words that sound the same but are spelled differently: too, to, two. We have words that are spelled the same and pronounced the same but have completely different meanings – does and dissipate – and collections of letters that spell words only if pronounced the way they appear in other words. For instance, pronounce the word “ghoti.” (I have hidden the answer at the bottom of the blog.) We also have expressions that are concise in English but would take a paragraph to explain to a foreigner: “I would if I could but I can’t so I won’t.” In other languages, “would’ and “could” are the same word as are “can’t” and “won’t.” In memory of my father I would like to bring to light one other oddity of the English language: a word with two opposite meanings spelled the same way and pronounced the same way: nonplussed.  On definition is “surprised and confused so much that [someone is] unsure how to react” and the other is “not disconcerted; unperturbed.” And you can look that up in your Funk & Wagnall’s.