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Best I can come up with, not crazy about it either.
I don't know how to say I listened to an audiobook
without it sounding like it's missing something. "I read a
book" is easy, but evidently I'm not the only one who
doesn't want to say they "read" a book they listened to
the audio version
of. Sounds like I'm lying which
technically, I guess I would be.
Nothing sounds right. "I heard a book". (What sound
did it make?) "I listened to a book." (So the book was
talking? Was it possessed?) "I listened to an audio book"
sounds clunky and way too wordy.
"I finished a book" implies that the news is that the
process is over, not that you read it, like "I finally
finished a book, took forever." You'd never say that if you
just read a book, unless the time it took to finish was
the subject of your statement. "Did you finish Moby
Dick?" implies you never finish anything that you start.
If somebody here can't think of a better term we're stuck
in a world where there is no good description for
something people do all the time.
Slang term generator.
http://www.friendly..._term_generator.php
Don't bother, it's just throwing random letters together. [doctorremulac3, Jul 14 2021]
Current search results for "do the audio" in Google as of 7.17.2021
https://www.dmagazi...-the-accommodation/
As of this date it's saying: "Who should do the audio..." (for this particular book, as in, read the narration) It then lists a few candidates and the pros and cons of their appropriateness as narrators. [doctorremulac3, Jul 17 2021]
[link]
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Surely the verb is "to listen to" or "to hear" |
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You would listen to a recorded music album, or to a radio broadcast of a play, or to a lecture, or to the news, or to a preacher on a street corner explaining what you have to do to be saved. |
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You would read a newspaper, a magazine, a text based website, a grave stone in a cemetery, the instructions on a tin of baked beans. |
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So there is a verb => information encoding => substrate relationship here that we could usefully unpick. |
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In fact the arrows should probably go the other way round, or possibly not. |
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I think the key thing is how the information is encoded, as visual semantic systems, as visual semantic symbol systems or as audio semantic phoneme systems. |
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(Of course there is the whole issue of watching something, whether live theatre, film projection, or practical demonstration, which can combine direct visual observance (or even physical proprioception) along with audio and visual communications. One could even analyse the direct visual perception as containing semantic content, but that is beyond the scope of this book*.) |
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So, therefore, when you systematically look at or otherwise percieve a linear or two-dimensional semantic representation system which encodes information, and you parse the representation into information in your brain, this is usually called "reading". Note that by extension, drive heads read the data on a drive, and animals read the emotional states of other animals by observing postures and actions. |
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When you pay attention to and process sounds which contain structured semantic content, and you parse and process the content into information in your brain, you are said to be "listening" or "hearing". |
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Now it is interesting that "listening" and "hearing" have broader meanings than "reading", in fact they correspond more closely to "looking" and "seeing" than they do to "reading". But that's just an artefact of the priveleging of the static physical domain over the dynamic audio domain in Western philosophy for thousands of years (see Maconie's books on the science and nature of music for examples and discussions) |
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It is clear here that the use of the term "audio book" is a misguided label. I suggest that "book" refers most commonly to the substrate, being a written text laid down onto a flat sheet substrate. Books can be organised into scrolls or into codices, but I maintain that this is what the word "book" means. |
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A book can contain poem, or a technical manual, or a directory, or a thesis, or a story, or various other kinds of written information. |
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People have started to talk about "e-books" but I think this is misguided because the nature of substrate and display is quite different. Thsi belongs to the realm of information theory to do with the naming of computer files, but I think that a computer document stored in digital memory and displayed electrically on a screen is a completely different kind of physical object than either a codex or a scroll. |
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What people call an "audio book" is really just a kind of recording. I suggest that "recording" refers to an audio signal which is mapped 1-1 onto a physical substrate such that the substrate can be manipulated and made to reproduce the audio signal at will. So a recording can contain music, speech, natural sounds, or noise. |
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In conclusion, there are two terminological issues here. The first and most pressing is that the word "book" is being misused to describe non-book objects and physical phenomena, e.g. audio recordings and computer storage files. |
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The second is that we are missing in English the words that complete, in the audio domain, the matched pairs:
Looking / listening
Seeing / hearing
Watching / x
Reading / y
Visualising / z |
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*you might argue that this text is not a book, which would concisely prove one part of my thesis above. |
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Wizzened. Wizen, only more drawn out. |
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"Listened to" is ok with me, same as anything else
requiring the use of the ears to experience apart
from when my cat is licking them. [note - this is
your last chance 8th!] |
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This is why I come here. Knew I’d get some
interesting observations. |
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I do most of my reading on an e-reader. When talking about
it, though, I refer to it simply as a "book". When it is out of
reach I might ask a nearby simian to "hand me my book" or
someone on the bus will ask me what book I am reading. |
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Though [pocmloc] draws a distinction between ereading and
listening to an audiobook by separating the information the
transfer into static and dynamic I reject this false binary
because all information is inherently dynamic. One can
"read" a movie in the same way one "reads" a book because
all the reading implies is the digesting of small chunk of
information. In this context reading is not a question of
literacy. |
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To this extent I would argue that one does in fact
"read" an audiobook. Who cares the specific details of how a
book was consumed or by what method the information
transferred be it page, screen, sound, or even bumps?
Would reading a book aloud to oneself change the content?
Reading is reading, regardless of how |
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//Who cares the specific details of how a book was
consumed or by what method the information
transferred// |
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It is different though. You could have the words read in a
computer voice, and that would transfer the information
to your brain, but that's not usually what's going on.
Instead it's read by a person who adds some level of
dramatization. It's not a movie, or even a one-person
radio drama, but it's a lot more than text>eyes>brain. |
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I wonder what goes on with blind people with braille.
Reading quickly becomes a practiced activity, you stop
reading letters and instead recognize words, and likely
whole groups of words all at once because the eyes and
visual cortex are really high-end computational hardware.
Feeling along letter-by-letter with the (relatively) low
resolution of the sensory nerve endings in the fingers
must be a different experience. Although I'll bet there's
also a lot of adaptation. |
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You know, reading through these I think we're all
stuck on looking for something that makes sense.
Maybe this is the perfect time for a slang term,
something with one syllable. |
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Found a random slang term generator and boy does it
suck. (link) |
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Sounds like heard or hear a little, makes some
sense. You used your ears. |
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"Did you read that book by Doctorremulac3 about
how any moron can make money in their spare
time writing books for stupid people about how to
make money writing books on how to make
money?" |
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"Didn't read it, I eared the audio version though.
Didn't mention anything about writing books
though, just talked about cat videos on the
internet that he thinks are funny." |
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When children listen to a bedtime story - they are "told a
story" - I wonder if there's a more active conjugation of the
telling/tell/told verb that might yield something that feels
more natural here? Something that describes the "being
told" action more from the tellee's perspective. |
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What is the physical and cognitive pathway difference between listening to a recorded lecture, and listening to a recorded narration of a novel? |
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[zt] "I was told". But the whole concept of "telling" implies live interactive stuff. A bit like being played a piece of music - if you visit the singer's house, they can sing you a song, but it would be fraudulent to put their CD on the machine and then say that they sang their latest hit song to you. |
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Yea, that's very weird how you're "told a story"
from a person but not "told a story" from an audio
book. Could even be the same story. |
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For the lecture, I'd probably say "I went to a
lecture" but if it was on Youtube or something I'd
say "I watched a lecture" but listening to a
recording of it like you
said, I'd just say "listened to" like with the audio
book but here's the weird part, I'd be comfortable
saying I "heard a lecture" more than I'd be
comfortable saying I "heard a book". Just gets more
confusing. |
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Good point about the CD, but that points back to
"listened to" being the only appropriate term. For
now at least. |
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//Do we need a new word for audiobook// Yes that was what my excessively long epistle above was partly about. How about "narration", not monosyllabic, but hard to shorten to something sensible:
"I listened to a narration of War and Peace last night, but I fell asleep before I found out what happened"
"They all die in the end you know"
oh... that's kind of spoiled it for me" |
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//Do we need a new word for audiobook// Yes.
One that works with "heard", and that's not an easy
bill to fill. Tone+tome: tomn? Okay, that sucked
but a one or two syllable word for audio book
might be
a good start. |
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Phonic. "I didn't read the book but I did the
phonic." |
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Phonic: (new noun), an audio book. "Did" in
conjunction with phonic, the noun referring to an
audio book, means completed listening to it. |
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Get it started as a local expression maybe, hope it
spreads. Start
with guys from New Jersey. |
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"Hey shithead, did you read the book?" |
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"No asshole, I did the phonic, so go fuck yourself." |
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Ah, but did you hear or listen? If somebody drives
by at 60 miles per hour with an audio book blasting
on their stereo, you’ll “hear” it, but not “listen”
to it. Like “seeing” a book as opposed to “reading”
a book no? |
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That being said everyone will get what you mean if
you say you heard an audio book. You can hear a
radio broadcast why not hear an audio book? Eh,
but
it’s still kind
of clunky. “Took me a week to finish hearing that
book it was so long.” Hmm. Just sort of awkward. |
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Didn't enjoy an audiobook? |
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Common phrases: "I heard a story", "I heard a joke", "I
heard a song" |
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A book could contain stories, jokes, songs, poems, novels,
biographies. |
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So why not: "I heard a novel", "I heard a biography" |
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What do you call a non-fiction book? Maybe you need to
break it down a little more: "I heard a history", "I heard
some self-help." Hmm, not that great. |
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If you listened to a specific book, saying "I heard Harry
Potter" doesn't work as well as "I read Harry Potter". But "I
heard the novel Harry Potter" seems better than "I listened
to the audio book of Harry Potter." |
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Or better yet, as this idea initially proposed, I vote for
"audioed". |
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If you go up to someone who knows the term "audio book"
and said "I audioed a book," I bet they would get your
meaning with very little thought. If this caught on, the
term "audio book" would fall out of use because there's no
reason to use it, but there would be a fairly smooth
transition to the new term "audioed". |
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But as Calvin would say "verbing weirds language". |
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I vote for 'audioed' as 'audited' is already in use. |
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I am of the opinion the only reason people find value in those massive depressing Russian tomes is that actually getting through one requires a good deal of fortitude, so one may then brag about having proven the use and therefore possession of a good deal of fortitude. I propose we trade Crime and Punishment for the literal versions thereof. We may thereby save a good deal of time by suffering a prison sentence and the ensuing poverty and a good deal of pain as well. |
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No matter what's chosen, I do know something
about getting a word in common usage (oh god,
here he goes again) having a term I invented in the
Webster's Dictionary. |
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Words are viruses, simple as that. If it's
transmitted from one organism to another it'll
either catch on or die. The main thing any of these
ideas has is that the old term "listened to an audio
book" which takes about 3 weeks to say isn't liked
by anybody. So throw it out there and see if it
clicks with the
organism. (people) |
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I'm thinking of trying "audioed a book", seeing what
people's reactions are, like if they stop me and say
"You adiosed a book? Said goodbye to in in
Spanish?" or if they just say "How was it?". |
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Maybe I'll try a couple. Don't know about "phoniced
a book", they might say "I don't need to hear about
your kinky sex practices." Seems like audioed
might get the fewest confused
looks. |
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To sell the idea, you'd just use this word to get two
points across, it's an audio book (you wouldn't
audio a paper book) and you listened to it. So the
proposed new word is audio as a verb. |
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So, proposed new word is: Audio: verb, to listen to
an audio book
Past tense audioed. |
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Use: "Are you going to read that book?" "No, I'll
audio it." |
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"Did you read that book?" "No, I audioed it." |
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Another way you could go is simply have a new
term with existing words: "Do the audio". |
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"Gonna read that book?" ""Nah, I'll probably do the
audio." |
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Now that might have even been used and would
probably not be questioned by anybody. Past tense
is just "Did the audio". "Did you read that book?"
"No, I did the audio." If you're in the process of
listening to an audio book you'll say "I'm doing the
audio." |
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I think you & zen_tom are on the right track. The problem is with the 'audiobook' word which is just a bit of marketing jargon*. You don't really listen to an audiobook. You listen to someone else reading a book out loud. So, to my mind, what you should be saying is that "I listened to a story/thesis/poem/radio play" or "I'll listen to it later". That sounds more natural & is an invitation to your own listener to ask further questions. Details about format, content, quality etc. then naturally resolve themselves as part of normal conversation.
*The excessive number of syllables is a dead giveaway. |
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//normal conversation// I'm sorry, you have lost me now.
I don't know what you are talking about there. |
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I think [DrBob] is correct in saying that the
problem is with the word audiobook. It’s not really
a book because it’s usually coming through a
device. Whilst maybe originally it was a book or on
paper, he is also correct in saying that it is being
read to you by someone. So this is like a story
being read by someone and heard coming out of a
device.
I guess just saying *listened to* is
about the easiest thing right now. |
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Bravo for you trying to invent a new word! I’ll be
on board if you find it. |
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I'm trying out "I'm going to do the audio, I'm doing the
audio and I did the audio." to see how people respond and
so far people are getting it. |
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I think we might have a winner here. |
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Might give it a shot, say for instance: "You know that book
The Da Vince Code? I did the audio and it was pretty
good." I believe the response will be about the Da Vinci
Code, not the way you described listening to it. Like "Yea,
heard it was good, maybe I'll get a copy." opposed to
"What so you mean did the audio?" |
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I'll continue trying this out with various people and report
the results. |
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Did a google search for those terms, only one for "Do the
audio" is posted, asking "Who should do the audio"
(narration) for a particular book. |
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"Doing the audio" and "did the audio" bring up references
to
audio production for various tasks but the context I
believe
should prevent any confusion about whether the person is
producing the audio or listening to it. However if that
DOES cause confusion, possible backup term to try could
be
"Got the audio." as in "Are you going to read that book?" "
I'm getting audio." "Are you reading that book or did you
read that book?: "I got the audio." Problem with that
though is it's the equivalent of "I bought a book" and it
does't address whether you read it or not. |
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I'll stick with do, doing or did the audio. If it works it
works. |
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Hit the audio? Very slangy but might has its advantages. If
it did get the idea across there wouldn't be any confusion.
Nobody would say "You punched the audio with your fists?"
Sometimes when something's very slangy people tend to
react with "Oh, better not say huh? and sound un-hip." |
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I'll throw that into the list of possibilities. Maybe I'll
compare reactions. |
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"Going to?" "I'll hit it." "Are you? "I'm hitting it." "Did you?"
"I hit it." |
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There's a slang vulgar sexual connotation for "hit" ("Hey,
she's hot, I'd hit that.") but I'd be REALLY surprised if
there was any confusion there. |
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Mmmm, could also be applied to reading a book too so
scratch that. Hitting the books is already a thing as well. |
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So top is do, doing and did, at least until something
better is suggested. |
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