Language:

I was singing a Russian song to little Benjamin, and I accidentally misspoke — instead of the preposition “k” (“to”), I used the preposition “s” (“with”). And then I realized: The phrase “k nim,” which I should have used, means “to them,” while “s nim,” which I accidentally said, means “with him.” The same word “nim” means “them” when used with a “to,” and “him” when used with a “with.” (In Russian, as in Latin and many other languages, nouns and pronouns have many different forms depending on the prepositions with which they’re used.)

     So my first thought was: What a weird thing language is. But my next was: I have spoken Russian for over 30 years, a great deal when I was young and quite a bit even after that, and I had never once noticed this. I was never confused; I didn’t get it wrong; there was no problem flowing from this odd complexity. Somehow it’s perfectly natural for one’s brain to deal with weirdnesses like this. Whatever strange forces molded Russian into the beast of a language that it is for foreigners to learn (Russian grammar is much nastier than English), learning it with all its twists and turns is literally child’s play for native speakers. And when we use it regularly, we don’t even realize how complicated it is.