I thought i had read somewhere that a person had different nicknames depending on how close the person talking to them was. Like, one nickname if their mother was speaking to them and another if it were their friend. Also, the abundance of nicknames for Russian names made me curious. Is there truth to that? And how would i know which nickname to call someone if their name were Ekaterina? Thanks so much.

I was randomly wondering about the number of tenses in the Russian language. I remember someone once told me that there are around 50-something, and that we don't use a lot of them (from old Russian?) and don't notice when we use the rest. That sounds like an insanely large number, and I have no idea if there's any inkling of truth in it as I've been living in America for 12 years and speak Russian only at home (never formally studied grammar). I'd love to hear any thoughts about this!