услышать

Is услышать simply the perfective of слышать, or does it have a slightly diferent meaning? Does it mean 'to happen to hear, to overhear?'

Yes, it's simply a perfective of слышать and yes, it can also mean "to overhear" or happen to hear as you put it. Note: it's in no way different from usual слышать rather than its aspect, the meaning of overhear or happen to hear comes just from the fact of getting to hear something, doesn't matter how you did it. The only Russian verbs I can think of, that are derived from слышать and which actually take into account how you happened to hear something are:

выслушать - hear someone out, to listen to everything a person has to say;
подслушать - to eavesdrop, to listen in on a conversation secretly.

Thanks, iCake, that more or less confirms what I thought.

Related to the above, if I wanted to say 'I never want to hear about this again!', would 'об этом я никогда не хочу снова услышать!' do, or should it be imperfective слышать as it's a request for no action to take place?

Perfective is about one-time actions, so никогда better matches слышать:
"Я никогда больше не хочу этого слышать"
But:
"Я ненавижу тебя. Это ты хотел услышать?!!"
- here the attitude was asserted once and that's enough, hence perfective...

Thanks maxmixiv; I was thinking that because 'об этом я никогда не хочу снова услышать!' is all about someone NOT doing something (ie no action), that would be expressed as imperfective. Also, as you said. it's about someone hopefully continually not doing something.

So would 'об этом я не хочу снова услышать завтра!' be correct? Or should this sentence use слышать as it's talking about a thing that won't happen (ie 'no action') ?

More likely, услышать завтра. Because probably you will be in a situation to услышать just once.
Example:
Boss has just said you unpleasant words, because your subordinate did something wrong.
Tomorrow you are to meet boss again, and you address your subordinate: 'Please, fix the things today. I don't want to снова услышать завтра, какой я нехороший человек'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by grafrich

So would 'об этом я не хочу снова услышать завтра!' be correct?

---

Both variants are correct.
There is a slight difference, as was said. Once vs anymore. But these meanings are very close in this case, because, if you do not want it even once, it automatically implies that you do not want it twice, because "twice" implies first occurence of "once". And so on. So, there is very thin difference in usage.

Okay, thanks both. I think I'm getting the hang of this now.