“Must” Means “We Have To,” Right? — False Confidence in a Second Language

Company chat. Tomasz writes to Nia in English about an urgent change.

— We must change this today.

Nia frowns and walks over to him a moment later.

— Tomasz, why are you giving me an order?
— An order? “Must” just means “we have to.”

Tomasz translated the dictionary meaning. Nia also heard the social force the sentence carries in English.

What really happened

Tomasz wants to communicate one simple point: in his view, the change has to happen today. He maps the Polish word he would normally use onto English “must” and assumes the meaning has survived intact. Nia hears more than the dictionary definition. To her, “We must change this today” lands as a stronger directive, closer to an order than a shared statement of necessity. Nobody needs to have made a grammatical mistake for the interaction to go wrong. Language carries not only information but also pressure, politeness, distance, and assumptions about the relationship between speakers. Tomasz’s profile makes the scene plausible because he values precision and unambiguous wording, while Nia, who is highly comfortable in English, is quicker to hear the interpersonal force of the phrasing.

What the research says

A person can produce a grammatically correct sentence in a second language and still choose a form that has a different social effect from the one they intended. This is part of pragmatic competence: knowing not only what words mean, but how they function between people in a particular context. Research on requests and directives in a second language shows that choices such as modal verbs, degree of directness, and softening devices vary with language, relationship, and situation. Even strong grammatical proficiency does not guarantee the same sensitivity to those distinctions — a central issue in interlanguage pragmatics (Economidou-Kogetsidis et al., 2020; Savić, Economidou-Kogetsidis, & Myrset, 2021). This does not mean that “must” is inherently rude. It means that a dictionary cannot tell you the full social force of a sentence.

How to handle it

When working in a second language, check two things rather than one: not only “Does this mean the same thing?” but also “How would this sound to someone who has used this language all their life?” For important messages, a few reliable alternatives help: “We need to…,” “Could we…?,” or “I think we need to…,” while stronger forms can be reserved for moments when stronger pressure is genuinely intended. International teams also benefit from an explicit permission such as: “If I sound more forceful in English than I mean to, please tell me.” The general rule is: translate the intention, not just the words; a sentence can be grammatically correct and still create a different relationship from its counterpart in your first language.

How Empatyzer and Em can help

Empatyzer does not replace a translator, but it can help identify the interpersonal risk behind a translation choice. Culture-8 and profile comparison may show that Tomasz prefers direct, categorical wording while the recipient is more likely to experience the same construction as unusually forceful. Before an important email or meeting, Em can help clarify the function Tomasz actually wants the sentence to perform: “This is necessary,” “This is our recommendation,” or “I suggest that we…”. It can then help him choose wording that is less open to unintended interpretation. Micro-lessons reinforce the idea that in cross-cultural communication, the correct word does not always carry the same social force, and that important agreements are worth confirming in people’s own words.