English Vocabulary 2020 | "Ought" "Should" OR "Must" | Go Natural English

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.