As a native speaker, your experience with the word "just" is not unique. Your direct perception of the word, perhaps because you have to consciously translate i

As a native speaker, your experience with the word "just" is not unique. Your direct perception of the word, perhaps because you have to consciously translate it, may be more unique! But for native and non-native speakers alike, "just" acts as a dangerous semantic stop-sign. It's a command that's not even recognized as being a command, because it frames the discussion so that you have to argue for both the converse of the proposal and that the proposal is challenging for some reason that can't be obvious to the "just" user. It mis-primes even the speaker's train of thought to not to ask what would obvious follow-on questions.