Я не расслышал вопрос и начал переспрашивать, а потом почувствовал неловкость.

Расслышать means to make out, to catch, or to hear clearly enough to understand. So Я не расслышал вопрос is not just I didn’t hear the question at all; it often suggests I heard something, but not clearly enough.

Compare:

• Я не услышал вопрос = I didn’t hear the question.
• Я не расслышал вопрос = I didn’t catch the question / I couldn’t make it out clearly.

So расслышал is more specific and often more natural when the issue is clarity, not total absence of sound.

Расслышал is perfective past. It presents the failure to catch the question as a single completed event.

In this sentence, that makes sense because the speaker is talking about a particular moment:

• first, they didn’t catch the question,
• then they started asking again,
• then they felt awkward.

An imperfective form would sound unusual here because the sentence is describing a sequence of specific events, not an ongoing background process.

Вопрос is the direct object of расслышал, so it is in the accusative case.

However, вопрос is an inanimate masculine noun, and for inanimate masculine nouns in the singular, the accusative usually looks the same as the nominative:

• nominative: вопрос
• accusative: вопрос

So the case did change grammatically, but the form stayed the same.

Переспрашивать means to ask again, to ask someone to repeat something, or sometimes to repeat a question back because you didn’t hear or understand it.

In this sentence, it suggests the speaker started saying things like:

• Что?
• Извините?
• Повторите, пожалуйста.

So it is not just asking in general. It specifically means asking again because something was missed or unclear.

Начал переспрашивать means began asking again / started asking for repetition. This focuses on the beginning of the action and can suggest that the speaker did it more than once or entered that awkward situation of repeatedly asking.

If you said переспросил, that would usually mean asked once again as a single completed action.

So the difference is roughly:

• начал переспрашивать = started asking again / started repeatedly asking
• переспросил = asked again once

It is imperfective because it follows начал.

After начать, Russian commonly uses an infinitive that describes the action as a process:

• начал читать = started reading
• начал говорить = started speaking
• начал переспрашивать = started asking again / started asking for repetition

Using the imperfective infinitive after начал is the normal pattern.

The object is omitted because it is understood from context.

The sentence already mentioned вопрос, and the situation is clear: the speaker did not catch the question, so they started asking for it to be repeated.

Russian often leaves out things that are obvious from context. You could make it more explicit, for example:

• начал переспрашивать собеседника
• начал переспрашивать, что именно сказали

But in natural speech, leaving it out is very normal.

Неловкость means awkwardness, embarrassment, or a feeling of discomfort in a social situation.

In this sentence, почувствовал неловкость means the speaker felt socially awkward or embarrassed after having to ask again.

It is not physical clumsiness here. It is emotional/social awkwardness.

Both are possible, but they are slightly different in structure and feel.

• почувствовал неловкость = felt awkwardness / felt a sense of embarrassment
• почувствовал себя неловко = felt awkward / felt embarrassed

The first uses a noun (неловкость), while the second uses an adverb-like predicative expression (неловко) with себя.

Both are natural. The version with неловкость sounds a bit more noun-based and literary; почувствовал себя неловко may sound a little more conversational.

These are past tense forms in Russian. In the singular past tense, Russian verbs show gender:

• masculine: расслышал, начал, почувствовал
• feminine: расслышала, начала, почувствовала
• neuter: расслышало, начало, почувствовало

So this sentence implies that the speaker is male, or at least the grammatical speaker is masculine.

If the speaker were female, the sentence would be:

Я не расслышала вопрос и начала переспрашивать, а потом почувствовала неловкость.

Yes, it could be omitted:

Не расслышал вопрос и начал переспрашивать, а потом почувствовал неловкость.

Russian often drops subject pronouns when the verb form already makes the subject clear.

However, Я may be included for clarity, emphasis, or simply because the speaker wants the sentence to feel more explicit. Both versions are natural.

They help organize the sequence of events.

• и simply links the first two actions:
  не расслышал вопрос и начал переспрашивать
• а потом adds the next step with a slight sense of transition:
  and then afterwards...

Here а does not strongly mean but. It is more like and then / and after that, with a mild shift to the next stage of the story.

So the sentence flows like this:

1. I didn’t catch the question,
2. and I started asking again,
3. and then I felt awkward.

Because а is a coordinating conjunction connecting another clause:

• Я не расслышал вопрос и начал переспрашивать, а потом почувствовал неловкость.

Russian normally uses a comma before а when it links clauses or introduces a new part of the sentence.

Even though the subject is still the same я, the comma is still standard here.

The basic meaning would stay the same if you changed the word order a little, but the emphasis would shift.

The original order is very natural because it follows the timeline:

1. не расслышал вопрос
2. начал переспрашивать
3. потом почувствовал неловкость

Russian word order is flexible, but this version is straightforward and narrative. For a learner, it is a good example of the common Russian pattern of telling events in the order they happened.