Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast, number 909, Buying Electronic Books.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast, episode 909.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
Go there and become a member of ESL Podcast.
This episode is a dialogue between Kendo and Nuki. about buying electronic books.
Let's get started.
What's that?
It's my new ebook reader.
I'm just downloading some new books onto it.
I haven't bought one yet.
I'm old school.
I still prefer a printed book.
But if you haven't tried it yet, how do you know you wouldn't like it better?
This e-book reader can store over 10,000 digital books, and it's easily portable.
Imagine trying to carry an entire library from place to place.
I don't usually read 10000 books all at once, and I hear that there are a lot of incompatible formats out there.
Each company is trying to edge out the others by establishing their format as the format.
I think I'll just wait until the dust settles.
I like the look of text on a printed page.
You mean that faded text on that yellowed page?
On an e-book reader, you can adjust the text size, font, and even line spacing.
Can I get all of the out-of-print books on my shelves in digital format?
Well, I'm not sure.
Until I can, I'll stick to my low-tech books.
We begin our dialogue with Kendo, his real name, asking Nookie, which perhaps is a nickname.
What's that?
Nookie says, it's my new e-book reader.
An e-book reader is a small electronic device, usually that you can hold in your hands, that has electronic books.
Examples would be the Kindle, the Nook, the iPad. using the iBook software.
All of these would be current examples of e-book readers, although the iPad is more than an e-book reader.
That's what Nookie has.
Hey, maybe Nookie's related to Nook and Kindle's related to Kindle.
See, our doctor, say, is very clever.
Anyway, Nuki says, I'm just downloading some new books onto it.
To download means to transfer information from the Internet to your computer or your phone, or whatever it is that you have.
Nuki is downloading some books onto the new device.
Kendo says, I haven't bought one yet.
I'm old school.
I still prefer a printed book.
The expression old school means old fashioned, preferring things from a long time ago.
This is also a very common expression nowadays when people are talking about the way they may do things.
They may do them the way they used to be done many years ago, or it could be used to describe as I think was one of the original uses music.
I like old school music from the seventies and the eighties.
In our dialogue, Kendo is old school.
He says he prefers a printed book.
A printed book would be a book on physical paper.
The idea is that he likes doing things the way we used to do them.
Nuki says, but if you haven't tried it yet, how do you know you won't like it better?
This e-book reader can store over 10,000 digital books.
To store, S-T-O-R-E, here as a verb, means to keep something so that you can use it in the future.
For electronics, for computers.
To store means to have something on your permanent memory in your computer.
Digital D-I-G-I-T-A-L refers to electronic information things that are stored on the hard drive of a computer, for example.
Things that are stored typically in what is called binary, B-I-N-A-R-Y, code with zeros and ones.
Nookie says that her e-book reader can store over 10,000 digital books and it's easily portable.
To be portable, P-O-R-T-A-B-L-E, means that you can move it from one place to another.
You can pick it up and move it to another place without any difficulty.
Nookie says imagine or try to imagine, try to think about trying to carry an entire library from place to place.
Nookie is saying that the e-book reader that she has is like having an entire library in your pocket, an entire library that you can carry from one place to another.
Kendo says I don't usually read 10000 books all at once, meaning I don't read 10000 books at the same time.
So Kendo is suggesting here perhaps that's not such a big advantage.
He also says that there are a lot of incompatible formats out there.
To be incompatible.
I-N-C-O-M-P-A-T-I-B-L-E means that you are not able to get along with, or you are not able to use one thing with another.
When we talk about physical things.
Incompatible means that you can't use this thing with that thing.
Format just refers to the way that a certain piece of information, in this case an electronic book, is created and stored.
It's the form that that particular piece of information takes.
For example, if you have a Kindle e-reader, You use something called a MOBI, or at least that's one of the formats that can be used.
Microsoft Word is another format.
PDF is a format.
These are ways of transmitting information.
If you have incompatible formats, you have a file, an electronic file, piece of information that can't be used with certain things.
They're incompatible.
They can't be used together.
So Kendo says that each company is trying to edge out the others by establishing their format as the format.
To edge E-D-G-E out is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to try to push someone else out of a competition or to eliminate someone from a certain competition.
In this case, it's the competition for consumers.
One company edges out another is another way of saying one company is more successful than the other.
One company is able to be the number one company in that particular area.
In this case, we're talking about e-book readers.
Kindle says that each company is trying to edge out the others, the other companies, by establishing or by creating and trying to get other people to follow their format as the format, meaning the only one that people should use.
Kindle says, I think I'll just wait until the dust settles.
To wait till the dust settles means that you have a situation where things are changing very quickly and they're going to continue to change.
So that it doesn't make any sense for you to try to make a decision now.
Just wait until things calm down.
Wait until all of the changes are completed.
And then you can decide what to do.
That's what Kendo is recommending.
He's going to wait until the dust settles.
Wait until we know which format of e-books works. will be the winner in this competition.
Nookie says the different formats aren't that big a deal.
They're not that important.
You can easily convert a book in one format to another or another format.
To convert means to change something so that you transform it in some way so as to allow you to use it, in this case, on a different e-reader.
But Kendo says, I like the look of text or printed words on a printed page, on a paper page.
Nookie says, you mean that faded text on that yellow page?
When text... when printed words on a piece of paper become faded, they're more difficult to see.
They're more difficult to read.
Over time.
Of course, if you have something in the sun or out in the rain and then later you try to read it, it might be more difficult because the text has faded.
It is no longer the same easy-to-see color that it used to be.
Yellowed simply means changing in color from, in this case, white paper to slightly yellow paper.
You know how you have an old book and you open it up and it might be 50 years old?
Sometimes you'll see that the paper has become yellow. a different color, like a yellow color.
That's where this word yellowed comes from as an adjective, a page that is yellow.
Nookie says on an e-book reader, you can adjust the text size, font, and even line spacing.
Nuki is giving the advantages of an e-book reader.
She's saying you can adjust the text size.
That's how big the letters are.
The font that's the form of the letter.
There are different fonts you can use and line spacing.
Line spacing is the amount of space between one line of text and another line of text.
Kendo says, can I get all of the out-of-print books on my shelves in digital format?
Books that are out-of-print are books that are no longer being made.
Books that you can no longer buy new.
Out-of-print books are books the companies have stopped printing, have stopped making.
Kendo asks Nuki a good question whether the books that he owns that are out-of-print are available for an e-reader, are available in an electronic format or, as he says, a digital format.
Nuki says, well, I'm not sure.
Kendo says until I can meaning until I am able to read all of my old books on an e-book reader I'll stick to, or I will stay with my low-tech books.
Low L-O-W hyphen tech.
T-E-C-H is a term referring to low technology technology.
That is very old.
That is very simple.
That has perhaps been around for a long time.
If you think of books, paper books, as a type of technology, then we're talking about low tech, something that doesn't require electronics or computers or anything like that.
The opposite of low tech would be high tech.
High tech would be the most sophisticated, advanced computers and other electronic equipment that are now available.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What's that?
I haven't bought one yet.
I'm old school.
I still prefer a printed book.
But if you haven't tried it yet, how do you know you wouldn't like it better?
This e-book reader can store over 10,000 digital books, and it's easily portable.
Imagine trying to carry an entire library from place to place.
I don't usually read 10000 books all at once, and I hear that there are a lot of incompatible formats out there.
Each company is trying to edge out the others by establishing their format as the format.
I think I'll just wait until the dust settles.
The different formats aren't that big a deal.
You can easily convert a book in one format to another.
I like the look of text on a printed page.
You mean that faded text on that yellowed page?
On an ebook reader, you can adjust the text size, font, and even line spacing.
Can I get all of the out-of-print books on my shelves in digital format?
Well, I'm not sure.
Until I can, I'll stick to my low-tech books.
She edges out all other scriptwriters on the Internet by her wonderful scripts.
Thank you, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
