Ihave never been good at saying "no." My default response to invitations, favors, and requests of any kind is “Totally!” “Absolutely!” or the most self-betraying of all, “Can’t wait!” I will agree to lunch when I am drowning in deadlines. I will volunteer when I am already exhausted. Then I spend the next week rearranging my life to accommodate a yes I did not mean.

On my podcast Fifty Words for Snow , my co-host Emily John Garcés and I go on what we call a linguistic expedition into brave new words. Each week we explore expressions from around the world that do not quite translate into English, words that capture subtle shades of human experience our own language often misses. In our episode “ Russian Reflection,” we spoke with a native Russian speaker from St. Petersburg, Masha Li

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