Is ‘We Should Catch Up’ a Real Invitation?

Why Do Australians Say It This Way? · Season Two: After the Words · Article 19

You unexpectedly meet an old acquaintance at a shopping centre. After a few minutes of pleasant conversation, they look at the time and say:

Great seeing you. We should catch up sometime.

You part warmly. At home, a practical question appears. Was that an invitation? Should you wait for them to make contact, or immediately suggest a date? If no message arrives for several months, were they insincere?

The most accurate answer is that the sentence expresses a friendly orientation towards future contact, but usually does not yet create a specific arrangement. Some people genuinely want to meet and simply do not have time to open their calendars in that moment. On other occasions, the expression mainly closes the present conversation within a warm relationship. Failure to arrange a meeting does not, by itself, prove that the speaker lied.

Catch up means rebuilding shared knowledge

Cambridge Dictionary defines a catch-up as a meeting or conversation in which people discuss what has happened since they last met. The expression is extremely familiar in Australian life. A quick catch-up may be coffee with a friend or a short update between colleagues.

The ambiguity comes less from catch up than from should and sometime. Together, they present meeting as a worthwhile future activity without saying who will initiate it, where it will occur, or which date is available. The sentence establishes a positive direction; it has not completed calendar coordination.

This form of cautious invitation is not uniquely Australian. Conversation analyst Paul Drew examined more than thirty invitations in English-language telephone calls from Britain and the United States. Invitations commonly used conditional, incomplete or otherwise equivocal designs rather than assertive directives. An invitation places some pressure on its recipient to accept or refuse, so speakers often preserve room to manoeuvre.

Australian research identifies the learning problem more directly. Lauren Sadow’s Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers includes an entry for we must have coffee some time. Its explanation allows the speaker to feel warmly towards the other person while not knowing when both can meet—and perhaps never managing to do so. Sadow’s survey of experienced English teachers also listed learners’ expectation of a specific date after this expression as a recurring intercultural difficulty.

Sincerity and specificity are not the same dimension

An utterance can be sincere without being specific. Two people may genuinely wish to see one another, but both lead busy lives and neither converts the wish into a task. The absence of a meeting months later does not make all the original warmth fraudulent.

Conversely, some speakers use the expression primarily as a friendly leave-taking. They want to preserve a good relationship but do not have enough motivation to organise a separate meeting. The best evidence distinguishing these cases is not the intensity of the smile. It is whether somebody assumes responsibility for the next step.

An invitation becomes an arrangement when it gains an activity and a time: Are you free for coffee next Wednesday? If that date fails, an interested recipient may suggest another. We should catch up followed by I’ll text you tomorrow also comes closer to a commitment than an isolated sometime.

You can gently turn a vague invitation into a specific one

If you would like to meet, there is no need to wait passively or treat the expression as a social test. Reply I’d like that. Are you free next week? Or send a later message: Good to see you today—coffee Thursday morning?

If the other person accepts or offers an alternative, the friendly intention has begun to become a plan. If they repeatedly say they are busy without providing any possible time, you can recognise that their warmth is not currently strong enough to support an arrangement. There is no need to continue pursuing them. This is not an exercise in exposing hypocrisy; it is allowing actions to supply information.

If you want only to close an encounter warmly, It was lovely seeing you is available without creating much future expectation. If you genuinely intend to follow up, give yourself an actionable step: I’ll send you a message this weekend. Completing that action matters more than adding definitely to another vague sentence.

When has an arrangement actually formed?

Workplaces especially need to distinguish a social catch-up from a meeting. Let’s catch up about the project can mean that a conversation is needed. Without a date, participants and an objective, nobody should assume it has been scheduled. A calendar invitation or an agreed time creates the shared commitment.

We should catch up is therefore neither a false invitation nor a complete one. It is a relational proposal: I want future contact to remain possible, and I want you to feel the friendliness attached to that possibility. Whether a next action appears determines whether the possibility becomes a real plan.

Learners do not need to choose between believing the sentence completely and dismissing it completely. Accept the intention warmly, then test it with one specific proposal if you wish. That avoids confusing politeness with an appointment while refusing to declare a genuine but unorganised friendship dead before anyone has tried to organise it.

Primary sources and further reading

• Cambridge Dictionary, “catch-up”
• Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers, “we must have coffee some time”
• Lauren Sadow, An NSM-based cultural dictionary of Australian English
• Paul Drew, “Equivocal invitations (in English)”

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Continue reading: Why Do Australians Say It This Way? — series overview