Martine Rolls: English language is double Dutch to many

One of Aongatete's beautiful swimming holes.

Do you think English is a difficult language?

I have always found it fairly easy to learn, because it lacks many of the grammatical features that make other languages so difficult.

Try to speak some Russian, Portuguese or Chinese, either traditional or modern, and you'll know what I am talking about.

A native speaker of German or Dutch, as both Germanic languages are closely related to English, will find English relatively straightforward.

The tricky thing about English though, is that it contains many words that are pronounced or spelt the same but have different meanings.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. The bandage was wound around the wound. I did not object to the object. I'm sure you get my drift.

Earlier this week, I came across a post that is trending on Facebook at the moment. Lots of my Facebook friends are sharing it, and it's a poem about the pronunciation of the English language.

Apparently, 90 per cent of the English speaking population cannot pronounce every word in it properly.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

You can find it by putting "90 per cent of people can't pronounce this whole poem" into Google or have a browse for it on Facebook. I am not going to copy the whole poem into this column as it would take up the whole page, but here are the first six lines:

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse

I will keep you, Suzy, busy

Make your head with heath grow dizzy

Of course I had to give it a try, as I'm always keen on a bit of a challenge, and started reading it out loud. I did quite well, too, until I tripped up on Terpsichore.

The words clangour, zephyr and succour didn't do much for my confidence either.

True, I'm not a native speaker but the English language is what I work with every day. It's my job to know and use it well.

I believe I'm pretty good at it, even fancy myself as a bit of a wordsmith. My spelling isn't perfect but it's certainly acceptable.

Why did I have to attempt to read this poem? It only made me realise once more that there are mistakes that I just keep making.

I admit it: There are plenty of words in English that I cannot get out of my mouth. Words I cannot pronounce include most medical terms, technical lingo, plus a whole bunch of totally random things.

When I came to New Zealand first, I practised hard to pronounce Maori words properly and now I have a little laugh when tourists try to say Paraparaumu, Whakatane, or Ngongotaha.

I even giggle when the voice of my phone's GPS tells me to turn off at the Otumoetai exit. But who am I to laugh?

Even after 10 years in Tauranga, there's plenty I get horribly wrong myself.

I listen and learn but I still can't say pneumonia properly, or Pyes Pa, or math. This is probably a Maori word but who knows how to pronounce Aongatete?

I was working on a story about wildlife and hunting in New Zealand a while ago and had to talk to bush men about sika deer and chamois. Believe me, I felt like a complete idiot.

One of the places we visited when I helped out during a school trip last week was the Monmouth Redoubt.

I've been there several times but I simply cannot remember the name of the place no matter how hard I try.

I just call it the old fort by the rose garden. I've made an art out of it to find a suitable synonym quickly, so everyone knows what I am talking about anyway, or so I hope.

Nevertheless, the more I think about it, the more I struggle with English words. My head actually is dizzy with heath at the moment.

I think I'll spend the rest of my evening by the fire, reading a book, in Dutch. I'm pretty sure I can manage that.