contrast.oir-escuchar
Oír vs escuchar: hear vs listen
Oír = perceive sound (no te oigo bien); escuchar = listen attentively (escuchá esta canción). In Latin American speech, escuchar increasingly covers both.
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Explanation
This mirrors mirar/ver for the ears. Oír is to perceive sound, whether you mean to or not — 'to hear': oí un ruido, no te oigo bien. Escuchar is to listen attentively, on purpose — 'to listen (to)': escuchá esta canción, escuché el podcast entero.
On the phone both are used for 'can you hear me?': no te oigo and no te escucho are equally common. More broadly, in Latin American speech escuchar increasingly covers both meanings, so using escuchar where Spain might say oír is normal.
Oír also supplies attention-getters: oye / oiga ('hey, listen'), and in voseo oí / oíme. A handy idiom is hacerse el sordo ('to pretend not to hear'). Note that oír is irregular: oigo, oyes, oye, oímos, oís, oyen.
Examples
Can you hear me? The call keeps cutting out.
Region: global
I heard a bang on the roof last night.
Region: global
Listen carefully: I heard they closed the street because of the march.