No. 608 in Japanese
聞く
"聞く" means "to listen" or "to ask."
In a sentence
彼の話を聞いて、驚きました。
I listened to his story and was surprised.
In this sentence, "聞く" means "to listen" to something attentively, referring to listening to someone's story.
助けが必要なら、私に聞いてください。
If you need help, please ask me.
Here, "聞く" is used in the sense of "to ask," conveying the action of requesting information or help.
夜は静かで、何も聞こえませんでした。
At night, it was quiet, and I couldn't hear anything.
In this context, "聞く" is indirectly mentioned as "聞こえる" (to be able to hear), representing the ability to hear sounds.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “聞く” in actual Japanese podcasts.
Find “聞く” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Japanese podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into 日本語, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Japanese books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).