> How does the English language dictate informality? How does Russian especially accommodate formality? Some languages have structures in place for formality.

> How does the English language dictate informality? How does Russian especially accommodate formality? Some languages have structures in place for formality. In English formality is less explicit, more implied. Government workers and traditional office workers in Russia, for example, are expected to speak to each other on a second-person plural basis, and use patronymics to address each other: "Elena Ivanovna, did ye move the stapler?". Obviously over months and years of familiarity, or after going through adversity together and becoming close, many people drop this and start calling each other by familiar names, but perhaps not in front of superiors or outsiders. And dropping this often involves explicitly saying out loud "let's switch from 'ye' to 'you'". To give another example, if you worked at Samsung in the 90's and you spoke to your direct superior in 반말 (casual, informal speech) without reading the room correctly, you might not only be fired (read: made miserable until you make an excuse to quit), but basically have your professional reputation scorched if future employers heard what you did (i.e. the audacity of speaking to your boss in casual form). While if you worked at IBM in the 90's you could reasonably start a conversation with your boss's boss with "Hey Bob, got a sec?". Obviously that's not a rule. In some offices you could be more casual in Korea or Russia and in some offices you could be much more formal in the US. I'm sure there are plenty of bosses at big Corps in the US who wouldn't appreciate a "Hey Bob". But you can't be said to "know" Russian or "know" Korean if you don't know formal grammar. Whereas in English there's no such thing as "formal grammar" by comparison- it comes down to word choice, intonation, etc. e.g. - "I didn't have enough money, so I couldn't buy it." - "As I lacked funds, I failed to purchase it." > How would this not precipitate enormous changes? It depends what we define as "enormous". Would Russian society still be prima facie Russian society even if everybody were speaking English tomorrow? Yes. It'd be a bit different than today, but it'd still be very much Russian.