I know that after I'd spent several years working in Japan and then returned to the United States, both my written and spoken language (English, in this case) h

I know that after I'd spent several years working in Japan and then returned to the United States, both my written and spoken language (English, in this case) had a marked (and remarked upon) paucity of self-referential pronouns. I'm guessing, in this case, that this is just an ESL thing.