It is - hence my having studied it! - but please only take this as a massive overgeneralisation of the actual situation since all this varies massively with education levels, curriculum content and prescriptiveness, language morphology, cultural norms as well as cultural lynchpins (e.g. In Britain the monarchy's use of English is highly conservative and pins a swathe of (British (RP)) English to older meanings to a greater degree than countries with a more verbally fluid "aristocracy" (those whom society / culture tends to emulate the speech of - the upper class and celebrities in the UK, the middle class, idols and royalty in Japan).)
Sorry... got carried away, hence the nested brackets! ;)