Well, one nice property of Japanese is the formal language is perfectly workable as a language. You'll sound a little stilted, but that's rather normal for fore

Well, one nice property of Japanese is the formal language is perfectly workable as a language. You'll sound a little stilted, but that's rather normal for foreigners. If you spoke English while only sticking to formal grammar rules, you'd be unable to communicate like a normal person at all. I think the comment on the word 'you' sounding informal is a misunderstanding. People use a common formal noun for 'you', あなた, frequently; it's just the nature of Japanese emphasizes social relationships and makes it easy to drop references to people, so using such formal references can be stilted in the wrong context. But that's a matter of word choice, not grammar.