Hello Go Natural English learner, how's it going?
I'm your teacher, Gabby, and in this free lesson we're going to take
a look at three often-confused words
in English grammar: ought, should and must.
When do we use these and what's the difference? I'm going to walk
you through three different examples and show you
how our meaning changes when we use each one and
if even makes sense to use each one of
these. So if you want to learn more, keep watching.
Now let's take
a look at the first example: Eat breakfast.
Now we know that it's a good idea to eat breakfast.
So I could say, "You ought to eat
breakfast. That's grammatically correct. However,
nobody says "ought" anymore.
At least in American English, as you know I'm American, I'm from the
United States, no one in my lifetime has ever
said the word "ought" and been serious
about it. We might say the word "ought" to
make fun of a situation or a person.
"Ought" is usually old English.
If you want to sound
natural, don't use the word "ought."
Should. You should eat breakfast. I should eat breakfast.
That sounds great to me. I think it's true.
Should is a recommendation. Ideally
you should eat breakfast. But I know sometimes we get busy
maybe you wake up late, maybe you don't have time to eat breakfast
and that's OK. You won't die.
It's not an emergency. It's not a horrible thing
if you don't eat breakfast. That's why I probably wouldn't say "You
must eat breakfast." Maybe if
I'm a mom and I'm talking to my child and
I'm giving my child directions and I'm being very
strict and serious, I could say "You must eat breakfast"
but it's a little too strong for our everyday
use. Next, be nice. "You ought to be
nice." This sounds like old English. It doesn't sound
very natural to me. You should be nice.
Yeah that's a good recommendation. I like that. I think that you should be nice.
You must be nice. Well, I can't
force anyone to be nice, although ideally I think we should
be nice. I could, however, make
this part of the rules. For example if you join the Go Natural
English Facebook group, I could say, "If you
want to be in this group, you must be nice. It's the
rules. Next, exit the building.
Imagine that the building is closing. I could say
"You should exit the building now because it's closing."
I could also say, "You must exit the building," but it's a bit more
forceful. If the building is on fire,
I'm definitely going to say "You must exit the building, now!"
"Should exit the building" is not
strong enough. That's too weak. If the building is on fire and I say,
"You should exit the building," it just sounds strange.
It's not strong enough for this emergency situation.
As I mentioned before, I wouldn't use "ought" ever.