(Didn't want to hijack the "let's challenge Angie" thread with this response to your comment, but I find these linguistic differences interesting as well.)

I was also taught never to use a pronoun to refer to a person who was present. In my family, that was almost as punishable an offense as using bad language to an adult.

I hadn't thought about it as a cultural thing, but perhaps it's because my grandmother was British that that's how she taught my mother. My grandmother's response, should anyone use the word "she" in front of the person in question, was to ask rather tartly, "Who's 'she' ? The cat's mother?" (Is that a known expression or just an odd thing my grandmother used to say?)