It is fun to hear your thoughts about German frustration with English.
Yes, I have studied German. I am not fluent in German because I have never had that critical opportunity to be completely immersed in the language.
For me, German is like a long-lost cousin to English. I would happily give up all of my ability in the Romance languages for fluency in German.
I love its preciseness, and it SO shows up with the relative pronouns.
In English, as I'm sure you know, we do not even distinguish between singular and plural (not to mention formal and familiar) with the second person pronoun. It was when I achieved fluency in Portuguese that I realized how like a club (compared to a scalpel) English was here.
In my dialect of English "you'uns" is used to achieve a plural, but it is despised.
However, whether English speakers realize it or not, the heart of our language is Germanic. All of that French, Latin, and Greek vocabulary is just fluff. Any sensible poet should avoid it like the plague. I would much rather die for "freedom" than "liberty".
Frank