Hear and Listen: Easy confusion

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Question from Khadija in Morocco:

What is the difference between ‘hear’ and ‘listen’?

Answer:

Hi, Khadija. Thank’s for your question, I’m sure that the difference between ‘listen‘ and ‘hear‘ is not clear for a lot of English language learners.
Let’s have a look at them:

Listen is used to talk about or describe sounds that are being made around you and which you are making an active effort to focus on. For example:

• Did you listen to the news last night on television?
• She was listening to music on her iPod when I walked in.
• Mike listened to his teacher and then repeated what she had said.
• ‘Just listen to yourself! You talk such rubbish!’, she said angrily.

Note that ‘listen‘ is nearly always followed by ‘to‘ - you listen to some sound.

Just to repeat an important point; listening is active - that is you are making an active effort to listen to the sound.

Hear is used for sounds that come to our ears, but we do not, unlike listen, need to be actively engaged in trying to listen to the sound - it can just come to your ears! For example:

• Mike heard a bang in the night which woke him up.
• She heard someone screaming and called the police.
• I heard a loud explosion and then the building collapsed.

Note that ‘hear’ is not followed by ‘to’. But, to make it a little more complicated let’s look at this conversation:

• ‘Did you hear what I said’, asked John’s father.
• ‘No, I wasn’t listening‘, replied John.
• ‘Well, if you don’t listen you will never hear what I am telling you!’.

Now, that last sentence seems a little confused but also shows cleary how the two verbs are used - in this case, if John does not make an active effort to listen he will not hear his father’s advice (even if he may have heard sounds his father was making!)

Where hear and listen may seem very close is when you hear something like:

• Did you hear about Jane? She got married!
• I heard about the accident but I didn’t see it.

This is when information is passed to you from another source without you necessarily seeking it - in this case note that ‘hear’ is followed by ‘about’ - ‘to hear about’ something, someone or some action or event.

So, you can hear something without wanting to, but you can only listen to something intentionally.

‘How about’ vs ‘what about’ : same difference?

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Question from English4Today member Khadija in Morocco

When can we use “how about” and when can we use “what about”?

Hi Khadija. This is another one of those situations, and we’ve discussed quite a few of them here, where you can use the two phrases interchangeably:

Both can be used to make suggestions.

• How about going to see a movie tonight?
• What about going to see a movie tonight?

Or, in the case of a non-suggestive question:

• Is Mike going with you? How about Pete?
• Is Mike going with you? What about Pete?
• Have you finished cleaning your room? How about your homework?
• Have you finished cleaning your room? What about your homework?

So, use either and the earth won’t open up and swallow you!

Happy New Year! But where does it come from?

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Donuts! You might be wondering what that has to do with New Year or the English language - well read on and you’ll find out why Homer Simpson’s love of donuts may be his personal ‘lucky charm‘.

First, Happy New Year to all of our listeners, readers, members of English4Today and English4Today students.

When you’ve grown up in a Western culture, you probably think that New Year’s Day on January 1st is a pretty universal festival. After all, January 1st is the same all over the world so the new year starts at the same time everywhere. Well, in one sense this is true as the Gregorian Calendar (the 12 month calendar we now use) is used all over the world for commercial, transport and communications purposes. But a lot of cultures still keep a place for their own calendar and most of us know that Chinese New Year, for example, does not fall on the same day as the Gregorian Calendar proscribes and that the Chinese New Year festival is a party worth getting an invitation to.

Celebration of the new year is probably one of the oldest festivals around dating back to around 2000 BC when the Babylonians celebrated the new year at the start of Spring (the Vernal equinox). Spring seems a good time to start a new year but the Romans clearly didn’t feel that this worked for them and in 153 BC the Roman Senate set January 1st as the start of a New Year where it has stayed ever since.

The Romans changed the time of year when the new year started but they hung on to some important traditions that we still continue with today. The New Year’s resolution - an undertaking to do something positive in the coming year - dates back to the Babylonians. Typically, we now make resolutions to do things like give up smoking, lose weight or become better people and typically these resolutions are pretty much forgotten about by the start of February when we fall back into our habitual patterns of behaviour.

Wishing others good luck, or wishing it for yourself is also part of the New Year tradition and we’ve carried through to the present some of the symbols of luck, usually in the form of a ring or circle as it symbolizes ‘coming full circle‘, that is, completing a year’s cycle. The Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune and the French have a special King’s Cake which is in the form of a circle and that has a small lucky token baked into it. It was also once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year.

So, that said, grab a few lucky donuts, have a Happy New Year, and I’m looking forward to sharing another great 12 months with you.

New Year’s Words and Words used in this posting:

• resolution : an undertaking or promise (usually to oneself) to do something positive in the coming year
• luck : good fortune arriving by chance
• Gregorian Calendar : The modern calendar adapted from the Julian Calendar, conceived by the Roman’s, which fixes New Year’s day on the 1st January
• Happy New Year! : traditional saying during the New Year holiday
• donut : round, sweet bun usually deep-fried and coated with sugar
• Homer Simpson : famous television cartoon character
• lucky charm : a small object that the owner believes will bring them good luck

Scrooge : A mean piece of vocabulary

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‘Scrooge‘ - not a word in everyday use, unless we have a very mean relative or friend, and a word that is perhaps drifting to the sidelines of the language a little. But at this time of the year you see the word a lot more. Firstly, it is the name of the main character in our recently published version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol … more about that story in a minute. But Forbes magazine has also just made ‘scrooge‘ a word that more people will be seeing at the moment. They have voted Scrooge McDuck in at the 6th place on their list of the top 15 wealthiest fictional characters. Here’s his profile in the Forbes magazine:

No 6 McDuck, Scrooge

Net Worth: $8.2 billion
Source: Mining
Age: 80
Marital Status: Single
Hometown: Duckburg, U.S.A.
Education: Cluck U dropout.

Planet’s wealthiest poultry in hiding due to fear of bird flu. Thought to be in “money bin,” five-story tower in Duckburg that is world’s largest repository of gold coins. As adolescent, moved to American West from native Scotland and amassed fortune in gold and copper. Keeps most of his money in bullion. Known to enjoy swimming in money. Literally. Likely heirs Huey, Dewey and Louie (grand-nephews) now living alone in Duckburg mansion. Absent Scrooge’s supervision, Dewey spotted canoodling with Parrot Hilton. Reportedly wrote nephew Donald, a deckhand in U.S. Navy, back into his will. Member since 1947. — Matthew Herper Excerpted from Forbes Magazine Website

You might notice that Forbes has set Scrooge’s wealth at $8.2 billion but that a little research (see the cartoon left) sets it at one multiplujillion nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents. Perhaps Forbes couldn’t track all of the assets kept in Scrooge’s Swiss bank accounts. And they’ve left out of their short bio his most important characteristic and the one that gives him his name - he is a very, very mean duck with his money and prefers to hang on to it and watch it accumulate rather than spend it.

Scrooge gets his name from Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in A Christmas Story, which you can read, of course, free of charge, by downloading our audio e-book, and has much of the original Scrooge’s personality but has been perhaps ‘disneyfied‘ into someone a bit more lovable than the Dickens character.

But Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t just pass his name to a wealthy cartoon duck he also gave English a new noun:

Scrooge

noun

A stingy person: miser, niggard, skinflint.
Informal penny pincher.
Slang cheapskate, stiff, tightwad.
See give/take/reciprocity.

So you could say, ‘My father is a real scrooge, he never spends a cent and keeps it all in the bank.’ or ‘Don’t be such a scrooge! I’m only asking you to lend me 50 cents!‘

Not perhaps the most useful word to learn but still, at this time of the year, you wouldn’t really want to hear it directed at you. So, give a little and avoid being called a scrooge!