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Let’s learn the Spanish verb Oír, which means “to hear”. We’ll also learn why this verb is sometimes used to say “hey!” in Spanish, and we’ll get lots of practice using Oír in real-life Spanish sentences.
¡Oye!
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Today we’re going to learn how to use the verb for “hearing” in Spanish, so we can say things like “I can’t hear it” and “we heard them”. The verb is Oír, spelled o-i-r, with an accent mark on the I. So for example:
I can’t hear it.
No lo puedo oír.
The participle is oído, spelled o-i-d-o, with an accent mark over the I. For example:
We haven’t heard it.
No lo hemos oído.
This verb is generally conjugated a lot like other verbs that end in either I-R or E-R, but there are some exceptions. For example, remember that to conjugate Creer, there were some tricky things related to the fact that it has two vowels right next to each other before the R. So for the preterite tense, we added the letter Y to some of the conjugations. So we had:
creí
creyó
creíste
creyeron
creímos
For oír, the same thing happens. We have:
oí
oyó
oíste
oyeron
oímos
Let’s go ahead and practice the preterite forms of oír.
We heard what he said.
Oímos lo que él dijo.
I heard something. Did you (formal) hear it?
Oí algo. ¿Usted lo oyó?
He heard nine people that were making a deal.
Oyó a nueve personas que hacían un trato.
I already heard what they heard before.
Ya oí lo que ellos oyeron antes.
Did you hear? We have to leave soon.
¿Oíste? Nos tenemos que ir pronto.
The present tense forms of Oír do something weird as well. Let’s start with the word for “he/she hears”. If this verb were perfectly regular, we would replace the I-R at the end with the letter E, as we do in debe and cree. That would make this word “oe”. That’s extremely hard to pronounce without just sounding like a grunt, so Spanish actually adds a letter Y in the middle. So we have oye. For example:
He doesn’t hear it?
¿No lo oye?
And then the words for “you hear” and “they hear” are based on this. So we have oyes and oyen.
Let’s do another quiz to practice these forms, mixed in with some of the preterite forms.
He always hears what we say.
Siempre oye lo que decimos.
They didn’t hear what I heard.
No oyeron lo que yo oí.
You never hear what he hears.
Nunca oyes lo que él oye.
She heard they were in waiting for those things.
Oyó que estaban a la espera de esas cosas.
They hear the teacher say that two plus two equals four.
Oyen a la maestra decir que dos más dos es igual a cuatro.
All right, let’s learn the rest of our essential forms. The word for “I hear” is not oyo, but oigo. This has that added letter G that we’ve seen in tengo, hago, and pongo. So for example:
Yes, I hear it.
Sí, lo oigo.
And this is unusual not just because of the added letter G, but also because of the letter I in there; normally the I-R at the end simply gets replaced by the letter O, as in vivo. But this is a pretty irregular conjugation.
Meanwhile, the word for “we hear” is oímos. It’s pretty regular, except that it’s spelled with an accent mark over the letter I.
Let’s practice all the present-tense forms.
Do you hear what I hear?
¿Oyes lo que yo oigo?
She never hears what we hear.
Ella nunca oye lo que nosotros oímos.
I hear that every morning.
Oigo eso cada mañana.
We always hear that, do you all hear it?
Oímos eso siempre, ¿ustedes lo oyen?
The subjunctive forms are all based on oiga, which is very similar to the first-person form oigo. So just like tengo became tenga, tengas, tengan, and tengamos, oigo becomes oiga, oigas, oigan, and oigamos. For example:
I want them to hear it.
Quiero que lo oigan.
And then the imperatives of this verb are also very common. So for example:
Listen! I want to tell you something.
¡Oye! Te quiero decir algo.
Now wait a second… we’ve been teaching this verb to mean “hear”, not “listen”. There is a different Spanish verb that means “listen”, and we’ll learn that one tomorrow. But there’s quite a bit of blurred territory between these two verbs. When you’re trying to attract someone’s attention, in English we usually say “listen”, but in Spanish, we typically say “hear”, kind of like “hear me out”.
And in fact, the word oye is very often used as an interjection in general, to mean something like “hey!” For example:
Hey! Don’t do that.
¡Oye! No hagas eso.
Let’s practice the subjunctive and imperative forms of Oír.
Listen! Do you know more about that fact?
¡Oye! ¿Sabes más sobre ese hecho?
(plural) Listen! We have to leave soon.
¡Oigan! Tenemos que irnos pronto.
Hey! We’ll do it when she hears me.
¡Oye! Lo haremos cuando me oiga.
Listen! I want everyone to hear me.
¡Oye! Quiero que todos me oigan.
(formal) Listen! You can’t be here.
¡Oiga! Usted no puede estar aquí.
Before we go on to the final quiz, let’s learn something new we can do with the verb Parecer. This verb has a pronominal version, Parecerse. When you use Parecer reflexively, it changes meaning from “to seem” and means something more like “to be alike”. Here’s an example:
She looks like her sister.
Se parece a su hermana.
So literally “she is alike to her sister”. Typically you’ll use a reflexive pronoun, then a conjugation of Parecer, and then the preposition a to complete the idiom. Here’s another example:
They look like those other houses.
Se parecen a esas otras casas.
But sometimes you’ll see this without the preposition a or another noun; in such cases, what you’re saying is that the things seem like each other. For example:
He and his brother look alike.
Él y su hermano se parecen.
Let’s practice this.
My son looks like his father.
Mi hijo se parece a su padre.
The girl looked like her mother.
La chica se parecía a su madre.
Those boys look alike, don’t you think?
Esos chicos se parecen, ¿no crees?
We hope the baby looks like me.
Esperamos que el bebé se parezca a mí.
Those books look like the ones we have at home.
Esos libros se parecen a los que tenemos en casa.
For more practice with any of this, feel free to dig deeper with the free online flashcards here! Or if you’re ready, let’s go on to today’s final quiz.
Did you hear? She says the boys look like me.
¿Oíste? Dice que los chicos se parecen a mí.
Eight plus one is nine.
Ocho más uno son nueve.
(plural) Listen! You all can’t know anything else about that fact.
¡Oigan! No pueden saber nada más sobre ese hecho.
Listen! Have you heard that?
¡Oye! ¿Has oído eso?
She doesn’t hear what you hear.
Ella no oye lo que tú oyes.
Listen! We have to make a deal with him.
¡Oye! Tenemos que hacer un trato con él.
I heard they didn’t look alike.
Oí que ellos no se parecían.
Hey! I think, indeed, that they didn’t hear anything of what we said.
¡Oye! Creo, de hecho, que no oyeron nada de lo que dijimos.
In fact, we need her to hear what we have to tell her.
De hecho, necesitamos que ella oiga lo que le tenemos que decir.
Listen! Do you really think she looks like her parents?
¡Oye! ¿De verdad crees que ella se parece a sus padres?
We want him to hear what I heard before.
Queremos que él oiga lo que yo oí antes.
Hey! Don’t say that, they don’t look alike at all.
¡Oye! No digas eso, ellos no se parecen para nada.
(formal) Listen! You never hear what I tell you.
¡Oiga! Usted nunca oye lo que le digo.
I don’t hear what they hear.
No oigo lo que ellos oyen.
(Plural) Have you heard that? We heard it.
¿Han oído eso? Nosotros lo oímos.
Seven minus two is five.
Siete menos dos son cinco.
Listen! We need everyone to hear this.
¡Oye! Necesitamos que todos oigan esto.
We don't mind the wait. We’re going to talk when they hear us.
No nos importa la espera. Vamos a hablar cuando nos oigan.
(formal) Listen! You don’t have the control here.
¡Oiga! Usted no tiene el control aquí.
Hey! It’s a fact that he didn’t hear what you told him.
¡Oye! Es un hecho que él no oyó lo que le dijiste.
(plural) Listen! We heard there were ten people at the party.
¡Oigan! Oímos que había diez personas en la fiesta.
To get more practice with these sentences, join the free course here and quiz yourself with them until you’re acing this.
In tomorrow’s episode, we’ll learn the verb for “listen”, and we’ll practice some of the subtle differences between that verb and Oír.
This show is brought to you by LearnCraftSpanish.com. Our music was provided by the Seattle Marimba Quartet, and I’m Timothy, encouraging you to do the hard work of learning Spanish. Acquiring a second language is one of the most fulfilling things you can do, so start your fluency journey today using our free course — join here.
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