Monday, July 2, 2012

Common Error: "Hear" vs. "Sound"

"Behind the Scenes at Sitzman ABC": Sitzman ABC has a dedicated team of sound mixing technicians that spend hours and hours getting the sound perfect for each post on our site.
Just kidding. This is just a picture of a guy at a sound board, probably in a recording studio. (Image)

Hello! It's Mistake Monday again, and we're continuing with our series about senses in English. This week I want to talk about the sense of smell, but I don't have a Common Error related to smell. So, for today I decided to do one more post related to last week's topic, hearing. Then, for Word Wednesday we'll continue with vocabulary related to smell

How does that sound?

I hope it sounds good, because that's how it's going to be, haha! In fact, that's today's Common Error: 

Common Error: Hear vs. Sound
DON’T say this:"The music hears excellent."
"Celine Dion sound herself very bad."
WHY?-Remember that last week we talked about the difference between hear and listen. Those are two verbs that we can use when we receive and process sound in our ears.

-Sound is used to describe when we produce sounds. It's a bit complicated because "sound" can be a verb ("sonar" in Spanish) or a noun ("sónido" in Spanish).

-As a verb:
"This music sounds great! What exactly are you listening to?"

-As a noun:
"It was so quiet in the house that you couldn't hear a sound."

Note: It's also common to use "sound" to express your opinion about an idea or some general information, and is often followed by "like":
-"That sounds like a great idea!"
-"Based on your description, Rodrigo sounds like a very nice person."
INSTEAD, SAY THIS:-"The music sounds excellent."
-"Celine Dion sounds very bad."

That's it for today! If you have questions or comments, please leave a comment or contact me. Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

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-Ryan

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