What's the difference between hearing and listening?

To feel is a verb that indicates when you experience or have any physical sensation. You can feel it with your hearing, but also with the rest of your body. Instead, to listen is a verb that refers only to when a person pays attention to some form of communication. It's easier to understand if you imagine yourself in front of someone speaking Japanese. You could clearly feel the sounds of the voice, but you can't understand (listen) a word. And if you try to listen to even a word, you'll can't enjoy the full sentence.

Sound is to be considered as the father of the word: it is the natural evolution of a human being's first wailing, which we all used instinctively from the very first day to communicate our survival needs to our parents. All this without anyone telling us how to do it: it was a natural and inborn mechanism.

Hearing or listening

In truth, each of us listens to his or her own voice as it is being produced, just like any other person on earth. Everything is born from the vibration produced by the larynx that expands into the surrounding environment thanks to the air released when we breathe. Part of this sound reaches our ears via the air, part of this sound reaches the inner part of the ear via our body.

The physiology of the human being leads us to conclude that the means we use to control language is not, as everyone thinks, the phonatory apparatus, but is the air that surrounds us: we have only developed a very refined way to control it. If we analyze this idea better, we can even understand that it is always the air that allows us to hear what we say. Air not only allows us to breathe but also to communicate.