> There was an article in New Scientist a couple of years ago that related
> the behaviour of bi- and tri-lingual children and teenagers when
> speaking any one of their particular languages. As I recall, a
> Japanese/English speaking kid would be considerably more polite and
> deferential when speaking Japanese than when speaking English.

In English we don't really change the language much depending on who we 
are speaking to. In German you have du/sie but in Japanese there are 
more options, and in the extreme (eg dealing with the boss of your 
company or an important customer) things get pretty crazy. A Japanese 
colleague once literally translated what he'd just been told in a bank, 
it went something like "With respect, we beg your permission to kindly 
allow us to forward this form as quickly as possible to our 
headquarters.". The equivalent in an English bank would probably be 
"we'll send this off to head office ok".

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