"I hear" vs. "I am hearing"
🤔 Today, during one of my lessons (I teach online by means of Skype mainly) a student of intermediate level (B1) has asked me if she can use "I am hearing" in the context below?
T: Can you hear me well?
S: Yes, I hear you well. / I am hearing you well.
- the conversation was held through Skype
According to Oxford Learners Dictionary HEAR (verb) => [intransitive, transitive] (not used in the progressive tenses) and there are no any single example of a sentence with using "I'm hearing" and similar.
Besides the idiom "be seeing/hearing things" 👉(informal, humorous) to imagine that you can see or hear something that is in fact not there.
Dictionary www.merriam-webster.com gives pretty much the same answer. But here I have found good example sentences with similar context.
Do you hear that music?
I couldn't hear a word of what he said over all that noise.
BUT Macmillan dictionary, actually gives the following explanation 👇
So at this point I decided to finish with the dictionaries, because Cambridge dictionary, Urban dictionary and even this cool 'thing' doesn't have any more useful information regarding my question.
The average person would surf / google the internet right away. Which, of course, I did 🤓. And here what I have.
📍By Niall Tracey, in www.quora.com:
“I’m hearing you” is valid in (contemporary) English, and in some situations it will have a similar meaning to “I hear you”, but in others it won’t.
“I hear you” has two main meanings:
- “I can hear you” — i.e. your words (or other sounds you are making) are reaching my ears loudly and clearly enough to be made out
- “I understand” and/or “agree”. This is maybe primarily urban north American (A: Yo, that girl is hot. B: I hear you) but you also hear it at times in corporate speak, where there is no sense of agreement, and it is usually followed by “but…” i.e. “I have received your message, but I’m not even going to think about” (“hearing” is a passive process, after all). If you say “I’m hearing you”, I’m likely to interpret it as this last usage — your words are hitting my ears, but you are wrong, so I’m not going to think about it.
There are some more answers to this question which have similar explanation that "I'm hearing" has different meaning from the meaning as "be able to percept sounds with your ears".
📍Here are a lot of examples, with the sentences "I'm hearing", but all the meaning are not "be aware of sounds with your hears". The meaning are the following:
👉be aware of some information
👉understand or agree
👉when 'hear' emphasizes that a situation is temporary
👉I don't believe => like “I’m hearing you, but I don’t believe a word you are saying."
👉idiomatic usage as in Oxford Learners Dictionary [= to imagine that you can see or hear something that is in fact not there.]
The next my move was go to the site with video cuts from movies 🎞📺
There are about five exact examples with usage of 'hear' in Continuous tenses but non of them are used in the context "to be aware of sound with your ears".
And also, I was shared with this amazing resource Sketch Engine for Language Learning, which is examples, collocations and thesaurus for learners of English. If you go through all the example that is provided there you will see that "I'm hearing you" is used with different varieties of meanings, but not with the meaning of "to be aware of sound with your ears".
So, I decided to dig deeper :). As, we all know a rule in the Grammar of Intermediate level is that "hear" is one of the state or non-action verbs and we do not use it in Present Continuous tense. Book 1️⃣👇
Now, let's find out what Grammar Books of Advanced level say. Book 2️⃣👇State verbs
💡So in this part we learn that some stative verbs can be used in Present Continuous:
📍 if a state verb emphasizes that a situation is temporary;
📍 if a state verb describes an action.
⛔️But still we don't see the answer to our question because "hear" is not mentioned and it seems to me that it can't have the meaning of the action. The answer could be the first rule, but I have doubts at this point.
Let's continue. Book 2️⃣👇Mental state verbs.
💡So in this part we learn that some mental state verbs can be used in Present Continuous:
📍 if a mental state verb emphasizes that we recently started to think about something;
📍 if a mental state verb emphasizes that we are not sure about something;
📍 if a mental state verb means think carefully about something.
⛔️Still don't see the answer, because the verb 'hear' isn't a verb of mental activity.
So, I go on my study. Book 2️⃣👇Performatives.
💡In this part we learn that some performatives can be used in Present Continuous:
📍 some performatives have a similar meaning with either Present Simple or Present Continuous in negative sentences
⛔️But verb 'hear' it hard for me to perceive as one of performatives.
Book 2️⃣ Let's continue and here we go 👇:
💡But nothing said whether "hear" can or can not be used in Present Continuous
☝️So books of series "Grammar in Use" doesn't give a specific answer. According to these grammar books the answer is 👉"I hear you."
Still I wasn't suffice, so I am planning to look for answers in the other Grammar books, not in this post though.
AND then I found out about the Oxford Dictionary (not "learners") and I stumble across this 🤩. As you can see there are three main meanings of "hear", plus idiom. And the meaning that suits to the question is number one. Here we have several more options but the context that we need has the following meaning:
✅The conclusion is that in the context below when the conversation as a call:
T: Can you hear me well?
S: Yes, I hear you well.
👉 You need to say "I hear you" or "I can hear you". The form "I'm hearing you" will have different meaning depending on the context.
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I hope you will find this information helpful 🙌.
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Created by @irina.olsen
✿ Materials used: ✿
➪ Book 1️⃣"English Grammar in Use. Raymond Murphy", Unit 4.
➪ Book 2️⃣"Advanced Grammar in Use. Martin Hewings", Unit 1-2.
➪ Links of the websites are all mentioned in the post itself.
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