H and I used to hold (though the frequency was semi-legendary) German Days, when I struggle to communicate exclusively auf Deutsch. We really ought to get back into that practice, as the struggle and frustration is more memorable when it is more personable than conveying pleasantries with strangers or what I want left out of my meal at restaurants. One of the more challenging grammatical constructs, universally, are the prepositions (Präpositionen oder Lagewörter), owing that there are no set or predictable rules to follow and that the rules, framework of grammar was developed and committed to study long after the Germanic languages splintered.
German, I find, there is more difficulty and nuance in modifiers--whereas in English a plastic preposition might clang dissonant, the meaning is usually not lost, German words admit of differences in declension and mood that takes a precise preposition that communicates a more narrow relationship. The natives of Vanuatu (the Sandwich Islanders) after centuries of colonial shared rule by the British and the French, developed a creole to communicate with plantation owners and level out the dozens of different dialects and Pacific languages spoken in the area. The pidgin is called Bislama--from the French word for sea-cucumber, Seegurken or rather
Bêche-de-mer, and is an evolving language, transposing English and French vocabulary on a mostly Pacific substrate of grammar. One of the features that struck me about this highly serviceable way of talking is the trend towards reduction and simplification. There is no conjugation of verbs but rather markers that indicate past or future tense, and most interesting, many prepositions and prepositional phrases have been replaced by the words "long" and "blong."
Long can mean next to (
neben,
bei), by (
von,
mit,
durch,
an), at (
im,
in,
auf,
über), to (
zu,
nach,
gegen), or in (
in), and blong substitutes for the genitive case or simply the plastic English word
of. I think I have adopted this sort of reduction, inadvertently, but I keep trying to become more fluent and it is constructive to be wrong and sloppy, as long as one does not settle on a plateau, and to see where speech diverges and comes together.
