Grammar is Rad

So today I started my day by flipping through an old book I have, one that anyone who took English 101 in the US in the last 10 years might recognize: The Everyday Writer. I'm working on a novel based on a true story, and it includes a great deal of characters who are not native English speakers, but will be speaking English at times in the book.  I've been looking up some rules of the English language so I can creatively subvert them in order to use the diction and word choice of a non-native English speaker without just making them sound stupid.
When I've tried to do this in the past, I've ended up... with... a lot of... sentences... that are, uh... full of ellipses... and, uh... filler, like... the word "uh".  And this is annoying to read.  Though it is fairly accurate, a lot of people speaking a second language who aren't totally fluent will have to pause often to consider their next words, running through a sort of mental dictionary to find the right ones.   But there are other, more elegant ways of illustrating this to the reader, and subtler ways to show that the person speaking isn't perfectly proficient in English.
We'll see how I do.  I'm scared to death of coming across as judgy or condescending.
In the process of looking this stuff up, I've found my self positively enraptured by the power of grammar to artistically communicate ideas.  As a native English speaker I use grammar automatically, whether I use it correctly or not.  So automatically that I sometimes forget it's there, and I definitely forget the rules because I'm at a point in my life where I'm no longer being graded on it.  I do well enough in every day conversation.  I would even go so far as to say, on average, I speak with remarkable clarity in social situations. But that's not enough in writing.  I need the tools to practice the trade.  And I'm loving the process of boning up.  Did you know what a Parallelism is?  I didn't!
Not that anyone who reads this blog will ever see a single subordinate clause of my new found powers.  After all, this blog is called Pete Rambles, and that's exactly what I intend to do.
But suffice it to say that after a few hours of reading up on grammar and sentence style, I feel like I'm Batman, and I'm building the Bat-Arsenal.  A while ago I read a book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. That was like getting the Batmobile.  Then I read On Becoming a Novelist my John Gardener.  that was like finding and furnishing the Bat-cave.  Now, with The Everyday Writer , I'm minting fresh Bat throwing-stars and reinforcing the Kevlar in the Bat suit.  It's pretty awesome when something so mundane can make you feel like such a hard case.