> First, though this may be stating the obvious, standards in culture are an important part of language; what is normal in one language is definitely not normal

> First, though this may be stating the obvious, standards in culture are an important part of language; what is normal in one language is definitely not normal in another. Russian, for example, has words for "this", "that", etc, but you wouldn't commonly use it unless you were being really specific; a few of my Russian colleagues when coaching me in my Russian have reminded me not to be so specific with Russian since it could be perceived as insulting. Whereas in English there is no such judgement for casually using the references. I haven't heard of this and asked my wife (native Russian) about it, she couldn't understand what it meant either. Can you give examples? Typically we just use "то" and "это" for everything.