Because that freeze is not a language failure, it's a decision point, and most people fill it with the wrong move. Two people can give the exact same answer to a hard question in a meeting, and the room believes one of them and dismisses the other. The difference is not the words. It's what happens in the three seconds before either of them speaks.
When someone asks you a hard question, the room decides how much authority to give you in the first three seconds, before your content, before your evidence. It reads one thing: whether you're comfortable enough to take a breath before you speak.
Most professionals rush to fill the silence, because silence feels like exposure. So the answer comes out fast and slightly high, and the room reads it as someone managing pressure, not someone in command. But the pause is not hesitation. It's the signal that you already own the room, and you're choosing when to speak.
Take one full breath before your first word. Let it be visible. Almost no one installs this, because no one ever told them the room was reading the silence before the sentence. Now you know. Watch what it does to the room.
This is one signal inside a larger pattern PACE calls the Translation Tax. If something in you still collapses the moment a room switches to English, take the two-minute self-assessment to see if it's the kind PACE is built to remove.