My teacher introduced the quote:
- You look but you don’t see. You hear but you don’t listen.
But I also saw books saying:
- You look but you don’t see. You listen but you don’t hear.
So which one is correct? I am between a rock and a hard place.
In terms of grammar, I think the second one is right because it is more
parallel as look and listen are both intransitive while see and
hear are both transitive.
But the first one also sounds reasonable to me as listen implies the
person is doing the action intentionally. You can hear a foreign
language without knowing it but you can only listen to a foreign
language if you understand it, right?
Best Answer
Google defines hear as "perceive with the ear the sound made by (someone or something)" and listen as "give one's attention to a sound".
If someone is not paying attention in class, then they can still hear the teacher (and will probably be aware if they stop talking), but they are not listening to the teacher (and so cannot summarise what they were talking about).
It's the "paying attention" element that means that "You hear but don't listen" is correct. As Irhala points out in the comments, if you "You listen but don't hear", it's because you are trying to pay attention to a sound that just isn't there.