Talk about breaking news! In Korean, you can't hear a goat! Not only that, but you can't smell a flower either! With a story this powerful, is it any wonder I'm coming out of semiretirement?!
Here's the deal: direct word-for-word translations of sentences like these don't work in Korean:
1) Today, I smelled a flower.
2) Yesterday, I heard a goat in the garden.
1A) 저는 오늘
꽃을 맡았어요.
2A) 저는 어제
염소가 정원에서 들렸어요.
You can't smell flowers or
anything except... smells. You can "smell" the
smell of something, but you can't "smell" the thing itself. Likewise with hearing things; you can't hear a goat or a penguin or the tender breeze in the hazel thicket (for instance if you're a hobbit). You can only "hear" the
sound of something.
3) Today, I smelled (the scent of) a flower.
4) Yesterday, I heard (the sound of) a goat in the garden.
Nobody would say 3) or 4), but you need to say things like 3A) and 4A):
3A) 저는 오늘
꽃의 냄새를 맡았어요.
4A) 저는 어제
염소의 소리가 정원에서 들렸어요.
So go forth and smell the smells and hear the sounds!
(Bonus content: Why am I talking about goats? Because this point of grammar came up when I was talking with a Korean friend about a goat sound effect used
over and over in the Korean TV show
응답하라 1988. And now I can't stop keeping track of all the goat sound effects in each episode!)
