Have you been reading BadDoggie's Iceland diaries? There's a real-life example of language issues, with the "protagonist" being someone who is good with many languages, but still learning the language of where he happens to be.

There's a similar thing going on in the novel that I took my nick and sig from, Homo Faber -- language (and the understanding or non-understanding thereof) features in that heavily. There's another short story I read in German class once where language and translation played a major role, but I can't remember the author/title (I'll have to go look this up now ...)

My examples aren't exactly what you're describing in your own writing (different levels of overt grammatical mangling), but the whole issue of the ability to communicate, and the different levels of success depending on how well the characters speak each others' language, is there ... (it could also have fit in the "advantage/disadvantage" angle of ana's prompts last week).

Languages are indeed fun to play with. I like studying dead languages in particular (they seem especially foreign, somehow). I took a semester of Old Norse once, which happens to be quite close to modern Icelandic ...

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--