Perhaps of interest, I found the mextchannel on youtube has a cool video series to be both helpful and in line with that Heinlein quote you like so much! It’s called “敬語おもしろ相談室”, and is a little cheesy, but informative.

Each main city and region surrounding it also has it’s own standard accent that is considered a more “polite” version of local speech, but the thicker your accent or dialect the more noticeable the differences are between them both. Usually these standard formal accents are spoken more softly with stronger emphasis on the sounds at the beginning and end of words. There are a lot of accents that drop Ts, Ks and Hs at the ends of words so when they speak more formally they don’t do that so much.

It’s also really helpful for when you’re talking as someone with a strong dialect talking to someone else with a different strong dialect, in that you have a middle ground where you can understand each other. I end up having to soften my own speech because I know what other folks are saying to me but not the other way around. This makes me sound a lot more polite than I want to be when first meeting people (Which still requires a bit more formality than with friends or family but not so much as a shop worker).

In the UK there’s a big difference in the way you get treated based on how you speak and in what situation. There’s a stigma towards it, actually. You can be thought of as stuck up or snobby or even assumed to be rich or middle class simply by speaking politely outside of a service based situation and English is your first language.

That’s no reason to avoid using it, though. Being too informal can also cause the same problems. It’s not something you can just ask someone else for tips on, either since it varies from person to person and they might not be aware of their own mistakes in that regard. Don’t bother asking someone too wise in it, either since they have even more ridiculous standards of what is and isn’t acceptable speech.

If you’re not sure, speak at the level in which you are being spoken to. If a doctor speaks to you formally, speak formally to them. If a shop worker speaks to you informally, speak informally back. If a friend speaks to you formally, they’re probably joking, but joke back to them in formal speech and then go back to informal.

I’ve never been to America but I have met a few Americans and they speak about the same regardless of the situation. No wonder they all think we’re posh when they don’t understand the system. Lol.